To what extent are the rights of disabled individuals upheld in the Welfare Systems of both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom

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In 2016, the United Kingdom (UK) was held to have committed ten grave and systematic violations of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) following legislative reform to welfare benefits that left over 600,000 disabled individuals ineligible for welfare support (United Nations 2016). In 2018, the Republic of Ireland (Ireland) ratified the CRPD. This project will compare legislative measures from the UK and Ireland that allow for disability welfare support. Of particular importance to this project are measures found in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and Care Act 2014 for the UK and the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 and Social Welfare Act 2016 for Ireland. This project will contribute to the emerging scholarship of comparative international legal research that focuses on the implementation of the CRPD into domestic law (e.g. Waddlington and Lawson 2018). The analytical and the law-in-context methods of legal comparison (Van Hoecke 2015) will be used to illuminate how factors such as religious values, ideological changes and the advent of legally codified human rights may have influenced a nation's modern legal system and identify areas where the practical impact of law differs from the intention with which it was written.This will be the first comparison of disability welfare provisions of a State Party whose CRPD compliance has not yet been robustly analysed due to its recent ratification, with legislation from the only State Party to date to have been found in violation of the CRPD. The comparison will also draw on the historically differing societal views of disability in these States and their influence on legislative development and interpretation. This will require doctrinal and archival research of relevant historical and legal documents. This project builds on my LLM dissertation which considered how changes to UK law between 2016 and 2018 had affected the extent to which it remained in contravention of the CRPD. A chapter of this was edited for publication into in the Nottingham Law Journal as case commentary. My LLM in Human Rights and Justice (distinction) and my LLB (first class) have provided me with the doctrinal legal skills necessary for this research. These skills are complemented by my professional relationships with members of disability advocacy groups and the NTU Autism Law Service founder, which dispense an understanding of the real challenges disabled individuals are facing as a result of the current UK law.This project will identify the extent to which UK and Irish disability welfare law and policy complies with the CRPD. The central aims of this project are:" To ascertain how differing historical opinions regarding disability in both the UK and Ireland have impacted modern legislation and its interpretation;" To determine which aspects of Irish disability welfare law are currently in compliance with the CPRD, if any at all;" To identify the significant differences between UK and Irish disability welfare law;" To establish whether it would be appropriate to adapt and transpose into UK law Irish provisions which this research has identified as complying with the CRPD in instances where UK law remains in violation. Irish welfare law has been selected for comparison to UK law due to Ireland's recent ratification of the CRPD and its cultural and economic similarities to the UK.In order to contextualise differences between the legal systems, this project will also analyse how historically differing approaches to disabled individuals and their protection have been reflected in UK and Irish laws, and their interpretation by the courts. Analysis of differing historically held ideological and religious values is necessary to understand how disability welfare law has developed so differently in both States.