The Right to Education of Persons with Disabilities: Disabled in Interpretation and Application

Abstract

In July 2001, the Irish Supreme Court decided that the right to a free primary education as contained in the Irish Constitution could not be extended to a 23-year-old autistic man, Jamie Sinnott. Much of the Supreme Court judgment is an exercise in statutory interpretation. The Court considered the meaning of both ‘primary’ and ‘education’ in the context in which it appeared in the Constitution – that of the rights of parents regarding the education of their children. Whilst it was happy to find that the type of on-going care and support required by Jamie Sinnott could be classified as education, nevertheless, the majority of the Irish Supreme Court limited the meaning of ‘primary’ education to that required by children and thereby excluding the care and support, which it recognised as ‘education’, required by profoundly handicapped adults. The impact of the Court's exercise in statutory interpretation is that, in Ireland, the right to free primary education is to be defined with regard to age and not needs. This paper examines the decision of the Irish Supreme Court against the background of the general right to education as provided for in international human rights law in an effort to ascertain the extent to which the Supreme Court decision, as it reflects Irish domestic law regarding the provision of free primary education, correlates with Ireland's international human rights obligations. In so doing, it will reveal the limited extent to which the rights of disabled person have been ‘integrated’ into the general right to education. To that end, Part 1 of this article will focus upon the Sinnott Case as it provides an effective summary of domestic law regarding primary education as contained in the Constitution, statute and case law as well as being the benchmark for the rights of disabled persons to education in Ireland. Part 2 will consider the provisions of international human rights law regarding that pertain to the rights of disabled persons. Part 3 will consider the right to education as provided for in international human rights treaties by comparing the provisions regarding the general right to education, provisions regarding primary education, and provisions regarding persons with disabilities. Part 4 concludes this article by drawing together the right to education and the rights of disabled individuals in an analysis of language and interpretation in an effort to determine the extent to which the rights of individuals, such as Jamie Sinnott are protected by both national and international law.