Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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204. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality further to Parliamentary Question No. 883 of 8 July 2025, if she will recognise obsessive compulsive disorder as a disability rather than a mental health condition. [39910/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Policy related to mental health falls to the remit of the Minister for Health. It is important to note that, in line with Ireland's mainstream-first approach to the delivery of disability services, all Ministers maintain responsibility for disability as it relates to their particular function or remit.

In broad terms we do not define disability by way of reference to individualised impairments or medicalised diagnoses. The Disability Act 2005 instead interprets disability as meaning a “substantial restriction in the capacity of the person to carry on a profession, business or occupation in the State or to participate in social or cultural life in the State by reason of an enduring physical, sensory, mental health or intellectual disability”.

This definition takes a broadly functional approach to disability, recognising that an individual's specific circumstances, societal barriers, and medical history will all have an impact on the extent to which a person is or is not "disabled". This is in line with the social model approach to disability set out in the UNCRPD. It also provides a more flexible definition to practitioners where specialised health needs arise that are not tied to a prescriptive list of conditions - which runs the risk of inadvertently excluding people from recognition or supports.