Disabled people invited to serve on committee monitoring UN convention

Emily Logan

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission will issue invitations to serve on the committee.

The committee will report on the implementation of the convention when the UN undertakes a review of Ireland’s performance.

The call will be made at the launch in Dublin today of research by the Economic and Social Research Institute, which reveals that in 2014, about 15 per cent of disabled people reported discrimination as compared to 11.3 per cent of non-disabled people.

Thirteen per cent of the population or 643,000 people have a disability in Ireland.

The study found that people with psychological disabilities or who are blind are more likely to experience discrimination in different social settings.

But deaf people and those with intellectual disabilities experience discrimination at a level similar to those without disabilities.

Dr Joanne Banks, co-author of the report, said this was the first time different categories of disability had been accounted for.

Emily Logan, Chief Commissioner of the Human Rights and Equality Commission, said a lot more work needed to be done in Ireland, where “the approach to disability remains stubbornly grounded in the medical model”, as opposed to a social model.