Projects look at stronger legal reforms for people with disabilities

A stronger voice may emerge for people with disabilities on legal reforms in areas such as sexual consent, criminal responsibility or medical treatment from a new research project.

Eilionoir Flynn will lead the team at NUI Galway’s centre for disability law after becoming the youngest recipient of a European Research Council (ERC) starting grant. Hers is one of nine in Ireland, worth €12.5m, announced yesterday by Research Minister Damien English.

The Voices project will take a radical approach to develop new law reform ideas based on the concept of “universal legal capacity”, a basic human freedom to make one’s own decisions and have them respected by law.

“For many people with disabilities, especially people with intellectual, psycho-social and other cognitive disabilities, this fundamental right has been denied– informally, in the private sphere, and formally, in the public sphere through states’ laws and policies,” said Ms Flynn.

People with disabilities will be supported by legal and social science scholars to develop personal narratives about their experiences in exercising, or being denied, legal capacity. This will contribute to proposals for law reform in previously-unexplored areas, to include consent to sex, contractual capacity, criminal responsibility and consent to medical treatment.

Irish Research Council director Eucharia Meehan said the project is timely, given recent revelations in the care of citizens with intellectual disabilities.

Other projects to receive starting grants will be led by promising researchers at Dublin City University, UCD, UCD and Trinity College Dublin, working on tissue engineering, solar energy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and environmental law.