Vol. 566 No. 3
148 Mr. Stanton asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the meetings that he or his Minister of State or officials from his Department have attended regarding the proposed UN Convention on People with Disabilities; the role that his Department has played in this issue; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12848/03]
Apart from internal meetings within the Civil Service, officials from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, along with officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs, attended: the first session of the UN Ad Hoc Committee established to consider proposals for a UN Convention to promote and protect the dignity and rights of persons with disabilities in New York in July-August 2002; and a special meeting of the EU Working Group on Human Rights, COHOM, in Brussels in February last.
I attended a meeting of the National Disability Authority at which the matter came up for discussion.
I made two speeches which are directly relevant to this subject, one at the annual conference of the Irish Social Policy Association on 12 September 2002, and the other at a conference on Irish culture and the law on 5 April of this year. Apart from these conferences and speeches, I have attended no meetings with anybody outside my Department dealing with the subject matter of the Deputy's question.
The meeting of the ad hoc committee in New York last year, which was attended by representatives of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Department of Foreign Affairs, was preliminary in nature and the outcome document concentrated on the future work and processes of the Committee.
The special meeting of the human rights working group in February, focused on co-ordinating a common EU response to a request from the UN Secretary General, for the views of UN members states on the work of the ad hoc committee. A common EU position was finalised via the common foreign and security process and the Greek Presidency forwarded a common response on behalf of the EU to the UN Secretary General.
