Director welcomes accession to UNCRPD Optional Protocol

Director welcomes accession to UNCRPD Optional Protocol

The Director of the Decision Support Service, Áine Flynn, has welcomed the completion of Ireland’s accession to the ‘Optional Protocol’ of the United Nations Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). The Optional Protocol came into effect on 30 November 2024. 

Ireland ratified CRPD in March 2018, 11 years after it had been an early signatory of the Convention in 2007. The commencement in April 2023 of the  Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, which establishes the Decision Support Service (DSS), was identified as an essential step towards CRPD compliance. The Optional Protocol supplements the Convention by establishing additional procedures aimed at strengthening its implementation.

The CRPD is an international human rights treaty and its purpose is to ensure the full and equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities. Disability is broadly defined in the CRPD to include persons with long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments, which ‘in interaction with various barriers’ may hinder their full participation in society on an equal basis with all others. This social model views persons not as inherently disabled but rather experiencing disability as a result of environmental or societal factors that fail to accommodate their needs.

The Optional Protocol now authorises the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - a body of independent international experts - to receive and examine communications from, or on behalf of, individuals or groups of individuals in Ireland who claim to be victims of a violation of the rights recognised and protected by the Convention. The UN Committee may undertake inquiries in cases where they receive reliable evidence of grave or systemic violations of the Convention.

“Essentially, it means that, subject to admissibility criteria, including the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies, persons with disabilities in Ireland can bring individual complaints to the UN Committee to seek to vindicate their rights under CRPD,” said Ms. Flynn. “It is hoped that accession to the Optional Protocol demonstrates Ireland’s commitment to the continuing advancement of the rights and obligations set out in the Convention.

“I am also encouraged to note in the recently published Programme for Government that, as part of their commitment to advance the rights and improve the lives of people with disabilities, the new administration will prioritise the publication - and fund - a new ‘National Disability Strategy’, setting out a vision to 2030. And as part of that, they undertake to adopt a whole-of-government approach and advance the implementation of UNCRPD and the Optional Protocol.”

You can learn more about the UNCRPD and what role the DSS plays in relation to it in this short video message: DSS information: UNCRPD