Tacaim leis an moladh atá déanta ag an Seanadóir Bacik go mbeadh díospóireacht againn maidir le cúrsaí foiréigin bhaile. Is ceist í atá ardaithe againn go rialta sna Tithe seo agus is ceist fíorthábhachtach í. I also welcome the launch of the SAFE Ireland report this morning. Last Friday in Galway Domestic Violence Response launched a billeog as Gaeilge on issues surrounding domestic violence. That debate will be very important. We should note that the Government has severely cut back resources for domestic violence response organisations and that part of the issue is that these bodies are suffering from a lack of resources to deal with the ever-increasing number of telephone calls and representations they are receiving.

I note a very strong opinion piece in The Irish Times today by representatives of the Centre for Independent Living on Ireland's need to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is an issue that has been raised with me by a local school, Tigh Nan Dooley. I have also spoken of late to people from Inclusion Ireland about the issue. Eight years ago Ireland signed but did not ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which has since been ratified by 156 countries. The Government continues to argue that it cannot ratify it until we are in compliance with it, specifically Article 12. It also contends that new capacity legislation must be passed. According to the article, it has had more than a decade to get its ducks in a row and, from a legal perspective, there is no impediment to the State ratifying the convention. The article also contends that the Government's failure to ratify the convention is based on policy grounds alone. By signing the convention the State has signified its intention to ratify it. According to Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the State is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object or purpose of the treaty. It is outlined in the article to which I have referred that all of the cuts in the past eight years to supports for persons who wish to live independently - they include mobility allowance, the motorised transport grant, benefit allowance, medical cards, etc. - without providing for similar or better alternatives constitute a breach of Ireland's obligations under the convention, despite the lack of ratification. Therefore, it would be pertinent for us to have a debate on the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and when the Government intends to ratify it.

I support Senator Ivana Bacik in her call for a debate on the issue of domestic violence. We were struck last week by the detail of the murder trial that was ongoing which was indicative of what we did not know about people's lives. Nevertheless, we do know about domestic violence. Many people suffer in silence or behind closed doors, but we are aware of the matter which has been raised in this and the other House. There have been various meetings held, but we still seem to have stalled in dealing with it. When it comes to taking action to change somebody's life or do something about the matter, we seem to move into a different space where the issue of domestic violence is treated as a nuisance or a problem to be solved between an individual couple and where the apparatus of the State has nothing to do with it, but nothing could be further from the truth. The continuing work of SAFE Ireland with domestic violence centres across the country, specifically in lobbying and conducting research, is obvious every time it produces a report and it is up to us to keep the issue alive in the Seanad. We are not going to solve all of the problems here, but we need to show that we believe that those involved in dealing with the subject need our continued support. It seems, however, that we have made very little progress, not just from a legal perspective but also from a societal perspective. It seems to be an issue we just do not want to grasp. We have grasped the nettle of child abuse and other issues, but it seems this issue is beyond us, or at least is one we want to keep beyond us for some reason I do not quite understand. I would very much welcome an early debate on it, in which we might perhaps specifically consider the findings made in the report rather than the detail of domestic violence. We must consider ways by which the law could be expanded and added to.