NATIONAL Disability Authority director Siobhán Barron has expressed confidence that the Government will ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Enabling legislation is on target, and the Department of Justice has promised to work with the National Disability Authority (NDA) as part of consultation, Ms Barron told The Irish Times.
Ms Barron, who attended an NDA conference in Galway yesterday, said she was aware of concerns that the Budget would have an adverse effect on people with disabilities. The NDA would be “scrutinising the impact of the Budget and making observations”, but it was “not an advocacy body”, Ms Barron said.
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) has this week identified the cut in funding for special needs children and the “halt” of the Education for Persons with Special Needs Act as among the “dirty dozen” education cuts in the Budget.
The NDA conference was designed to raise awareness of details of the UN Convention and of the Government’s national disability strategy, Ms Barron said.
The convention would strengthen the Government’s commitments under the strategy, NDA chairwoman Angela Kerins told the conference.
The UN Convention prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in all areas of life.
Ireland signed the convention last year, but in June this year the Irish Human Rights Commission told a UN human rights committee it was concerned that Ireland had not ratified it.
The Department of Justice has said it must first change the law on legal capacity of vulnerable adults to comply with the convention. Last month Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said proposals to draft a new Mental Capacity Bill had been approved.