I wish to ask the Taoiseach about proposed legislation on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, because a number of people have raised this issue numerous times since I have been here. From looking at the statistics it is almost a national embarrassment. A total of 156 countries have ratified the convention. Ireland signed the convention in 2006 but it is the only country in the EU not to have ratified it.

People are asking, as are many Deputies, why Ireland has not ratified it. I know this is being dealt with on Committee Stage under the Disability (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill but surely the convention can be ratified. From my experience here, I have learned that democracy works extremely slowly. Surely we have to give the 300,000 people with disabilities who are waiting for the convention to be ratified an answer before the summer recess.

I explained this before. It is possible to ratify the convention, but then we have to introduce the legislation. We have always taken the view to go the other way, which is to put the legislation in place first and then ratify the convention, as it means something. It was necessary to go through a suite of legislation and quite a number of Bills were dealt with. As the Deputy pointed out, this Bill, which is part of the suite that is being processed, is on Committee Stage. To my recollection, there is a number of amendments to others that must be gone through. The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, is adamant about this and has raised it at Cabinet on numerous occasions. However, this is a combination of the parliamentary office, the nature of the business of the House and the rights of Deputies to discuss these things at committees and through-----

This could go on forever.

The answer to the Deputy's question is that we have not ratified the convention because we want to put the legislation through first-----

It was 11 years ago.

-----rather than do what other countries do, which is to ratify it and state that they have ratified it but to have no legislation to back it up.