Skip to main content
Normal View

Joint Committee on Disability Matters debate -
Thursday, 30 Mar 2023

Climate Crisis and Disability: Discussion

The purpose of today's meeting is a discussion on the climate crisis and disability and leaving nobody behind. On behalf of the joint committee I welcome Dr. Robert Mooney and Ms Hanna Gilmartin who are assistant principal officers in the climate engagement and adaption division, Department of Environment, Climate and Communications. I also welcome Mr. Damien Walshe, chief executive and Mr. Peter Kearns, onside project manager, Independent Living Movement Ireland, ILMI.

Before we begin, I must read a note on privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or entity. If a statement is potentially defamatory and a witness is directed to discontinue making remarks, it is imperative that this should be done.

Members are reminded of long-standing parliamentary practices. Members are reminded of the constitutional requirement that they must be present within the confines of the Leinster House campus in order to participate in public meetings. I ask anybody contributing online to let us know first that they are within the grounds of the complex.

I now call on Mr. Walshe and Mr. Kearns to make their opening statements on behalf of ILMI.

Mr. Damien Walshe

Climate change is the decisive challenge facing humanity and urgent action is required to stabilise the planet for this and future generations. Failure to act nationally and globally will have disastrous effects on the lives of billions of people. Climate change does not discriminate. It does not pick and choose who should be affected due to our mishandling of our home. Discrimination is the job of our species.

As a national disabled persons' organisation, DPO, we are concerned that failure to treat climate change as a global emergency will have even greater consequences for people who are pushed to the edges of society, and precisely on the lives of disabled people nationally and internationally. Independent Living Movement Ireland's vision, as a cross-impairment DPO, is an Ireland where disabled persons have liberty and self-determination over all aspects of their lives to fully participate in an inclusive society. We recognise and welcome that measures need to be urgently developed to drastically reduce our carbon emissions. However, it is crucial that any climate change actions do not undermine our commitments to the inclusion of disabled people in Ireland under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD.

We appreciate that the development of climate change actions could be transformative. Investment in sustainable housing and effective and efficient transportation systems are key to moving from environmental disaster to a more sustainable future. However, there is an urgent need to engage with DPOs to ensure that any public investment is fully inclusive and ensure that Exchequer funds are designed to meet the needs of everyone. Climate change and environmentalism are as much about social justice as about correcting the damage we have done to our planet. Disabled people are often disregarded in the discourses and decisions of this environmental social justice. We are frequently seen as an afterthought or an energy burden rather than being part of a whole societal transformative effect for our shared future.

Analysis of disability inclusion in national climate commitments and policies shows that few state parties to the Paris Agreement currently refer to disabled people in their climate mitigation policies. The report notes that the failure to include disabled people in climate mitigation actions may lead to outcomes that are inconsistent with our rights. In Ireland we note that the Climate Action Plan 2023, Changing Ireland for the Better, has a solitary reference to disabled people in relation to minimum levels of disabled parking. This systematic invisibility of disabled people in climate planning reflects a lack of structured engagement with DPOs on this issue.

The lack of engagement with DPOs on local and national plans to decarbonise Irish society has and will have unintentional impacts on our lives. Nationally and internationally, environmental grassroots organisations have historically have been led by non-disabled people, who although genuine attempting to save the environment do not take into account those with less access to resources than themselves. For example, ILMI recognises the need to reduce our carbon footprint by trying to reduce reliance on cars in towns and cities. However, due to the lack of engagement with DPOs, as per State commitments under the UNCRPD, some measures are having unintended negative consequences on the lives of disabled people. Hard-fought gains by disabled people over decades in terms of the safety of our pedestrian areas and parking spaces have been steadily eroded over the past two years. Temporary changes to our public areas made during the phases of managing Covid-19 are now translating into sometimes unwelcome permanency. Disabled people are being denied access to our towns and cities by pavements restricting our ease of movement due to new allowances permitted for unregulated external dining. Why not wholly pedestrianise these spaces for the real inclusion of all rather than the enjoyment of the few?

Our disabled parking spaces are being removed to other locations, with no reference to where and why the original location was a place of most assistance to facilitate disabled people to access the centres of towns and cities. The promotion of floating bus stops, which impede disabled people and people with reduced mobility in safely accessing public transport, and the promotion of dangerous "shared spaces" are directly impacting our ability as disabled people to participate with our accustomed ease of freedom in society. These are but a sample of a massive problem of restricting the mobility of tens of thousands of disabled people and older people.

ILMI recognises the need to promote active mobility and reduce our national carbon footprint. What alarms us, however, is that many measures which were initially trialled as experimental are now being implemented with little or no recognition of earlier objections to their design, and with no new consultation with disabled people through representative DPOs as per the State's commitments under Article 4.3 of the UNCRPD. This has led to a mix of local initiatives without meaningful consultation with disabled people, resulting in a lack of uniformity and hybrid measures which undermine disabled people’s right to access and inclusion. Article 9 of the UNCRPD specifically places obligations on states to take appropriate measures:

to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems, and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas. These measures, which shall include the identification and elimination of obstacles and barriers to accessibility

I will now pass over to my colleague Mr. Kearns.

Mr. Peter Kearns

Many disabled people are everyday environmentalists and are passionate about combating damaging effects on our environment. However, a measure such as banning plastic straws will have a very negative impact on the lives of some disabled people. Straws are part of disability history. Straws were one of the first examples of universal design. They were made for use in hospitals. Once disabled people achieved greater independence to live in non-medical facilities, we promoted plastic straws as an access tool.

As a result, any disabled person can go in to any bar, restaurant or café and get a drink. Being able to get a hot or cold drink in a social setting is important for all disabled people.

There are biodegradable plastics being designed but, as yet, none of them meets our needs in terms of straws. The current biodegradable plastic straws melt in our coffee and tea. In order to ensure that they are fully recyclable, these straws should be collected by the café, restaurant or pub and sent off to the USA for biodegradable processing in specially adapted ovens. They do not biodegrade in compost heaps. None of the current alternatives works right, and some are even highly dangerous. Some disabled people need something that is affordable, flexible, high-temperature safe, with a low choking and injury risk. So far, the only thing that meets these criteria is the single-use drinking straw. Banning plastic straws hurts some disabled people and has serious consequences on people being able to consume liquids. It is these types of decisions, which are made with good intentions to make life more sustainable, but have a serious negative effect on disabled people's lives that are a example of the real lack of a consultation process with disabled people and their DPOs in Ireland. Moreover, without mechanisms to engage meaningfully with authentic DPOs, there is a tangible concern that climate change policies will actually reduce the inclusion of disabled people in society.

We in ILMI believe that there is a need for a national blueprint of standards to ensure that proposed changes to improve the environments of our cities and towns reflect our commitments to "develop, promulgate and monitor the implementation of minimum standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services open or provided to the public". The ILMI feels that Departments, with the oversight of our national human rights institution, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, should undertake a review of the design manual for urban roads and streets to reflect expectations and commitments under the UNCRPD.

We in the ILMI recognise that change is necessary to reduce our carbon emissions, but we feel that this can and should be done with our existing commitments under the UNCRPD to ensure that disabled people are not further marginalised and excluded from society through a failure to recognise that disabled people must have accommodation made to provide for transport and mobility needs. Better transport systems, better and more efficient homes, towns, cities and rural areas benefit all. We have fought long and hard to have systemic barriers removed that denied us our right to access and inclusion. These hard-won rights cannot be undone through the lack of strategic thinking that fails to embed inclusion in the development of sustainable towns and cities going forward. Again, climate disaster does not discriminate, that is the job of humankind.

I thank Mr. Kearns.

Dr. Robert Mooney

I thank the Chair for the invitation to meet with the committee. I lead the national dialogue on climate action, NDCA, in the Department.

The specific challenges facing people with disabilities are reflected in a number of policy areas within the Department . I will focus on the NDCA, the national adaptation framework, the circular economy, and the sustainable development goals.

Under the national dialogue, delivering on our climate ambition requires that the Government and the people of Ireland come together in a strengthened social contract for climate action and the co-creation of real solutions to these challenges. The NDCA is led by the Department and is the central vehicle to engage, enable, and empower people to participate in taking climate action and to inform the climate action plan and sectoral policy. This is being delivered through four key pillars. They include: increasing awareness of climate change based on evidence; delivering an inclusive programme of engagement to inform climate policy; promoting climate literacy and improving people's capacity to act and; empowering people to make positive behavioural changes that improve their quality of life.

The outcome of the NDCA is the delivery of a strengthened social contract between the Government and the Irish people around climate action. In terms of populations vulnerable to the transition to carbon neutrality, in 2022, the NDCA hosted ten focus groups to engage a variety of populations vulnerable to the transition to carbon neutrality. We held one focus group involving people with disabilities in June 2022. We reached out to the Disability Federation Ireland, the Disability Participation and Consultation Network, and the Irish Deaf Society and through them and other contacts we were only able to secure two participants to attend - from the Rehab Group and the National Council for the Blind. That was a result of the time of the engagement rather than the willingness to attend.

The findings from the focus group show that the disabled community face different challenges in their daily lives compared with the rest of society. These include inaccessible public transport. One focus group stated, "in the shift toward walking and cycling over personal car use, disabled people are often unable to make this switch". There also may be significant disruption to routines in the context of retrofitting homes. Limited access to sustainable options to replace single-use plastics may disproportionately affect disabled people. Equally, there is a reduced capacity for representation in climate discussions among this group.

Reflecting on this, we have revised the programme for the national dialogue in 2023 and the climate actions in 2023 support people with disabilities. The findings from the focus groups provided rich content but we know we need more participants to engage with us actively in the future. As a result, a broader range of organisations will be contacted earlier in the year to secure the required numbers and to allow for a broader participation. A programme of work is planned for 2023 across a number of areas within the Department to engage people with disabilities in climate policy.

Under the national dialogue, we plan to establish key performance indicators across the entire NDCA programme, which will be relevant to people with disabilities. We will engage in further outreach to those not yet engaged in the climate dialogue, including people with disabilities, by building on the engagement last year and transitioning from a focus group-style approach to a series of deliberative workshops. We will ensure a broader range of stakeholder groups representing people with disabilities are in attendance and facilitated at NDCA events, including the national climate stakeholder forums. We will also ensure that the opportunity is provided to input into the climate conversations 2023 on our online consultation platform and that it is communicated to people with disabilities via appropriate organisational links, social media forums and other mechanisms.

We will capture data on the view of people living with disabilities and analysing the specific challenges faced by people living with disabilities. We will provide timely and appropriate feedback to participants to ensure groups are aware that their voice is being heard. We will also provide reports from the NDCA 2023 programme to inform the climate action plan and sectoral policy with a specific focus on challenges faced by people with disabilities.

There are a couple of other key areas of work within the Department that also address this issue. The national adaptation framework was reviewed in 2022. It focused on how it is possible to better integrate the concept of just resilience into the national adaptation policy and references disabled persons rights. Equally, the HSE is currently finalising its climate strategy, which includes the provision of medical care for those with pre-existing conditions, including people with disabilities.

The Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 includes a provision for disability rights groups to be formally consulted as part of the process of developing circular economy strategies. There are specific provisions within the Act to address the need for Ireland's transition to a circular economy and to take into account the needs of people with disabilities. A statutory requirement is placed on the Minister to consult with organisations representing the views of disabled persons. Section 7 requires the Minister to consult organisations on the preparation of the circular economy strategy as well as taking into account the content of the national disability inclusion strategy. Section 15 also references the national disability inclusion strategy in regard to the preparation of national food waste prevention strategies.

The Department is responsible for overseeing the coherent implementation of the sustainable development goals, SDGs, across government.

To achieve a disability-inclusive society, the Department recognises that it is important the sustainable development goals, SDGs, are implemented in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and that the two are used together.

To promote greater engagement of disabled people with the SDG national stakeholder engagement mechanisms, all promotional material for initiatives is circulated in accessible formats among disabled persons' organisations, DPOs, and other relevant organisations. A nomination from DPOs was sought for the new SDG forum committee to input into the design, format and work programme of the SDG national stakeholder forum.

A key objective of the Department and the new forum committee is to ensure the format of forum meetings is as inclusive and accessible as possible for all participants. A number of important actions were taken to improve accessibility at the January stakeholder forum meeting, and it is our intention to carry these forward and build on them at the April forum.

I thank the committee. I look forward to responding to any questions the committee members may have.

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their opening statements. We are all aware we are in the middle of a climate emergency and that significant action has to be taken to reduce our emissions and reach our national targets. Many of the things that are done may be well intentioned but they are obviously sometimes not cognisant of a significant proportion of our population who identify as disabled. For instance, I hear regularly from people about different decisions that are taken that impact on their lives, such as cycle lanes. We see in urban centres that the number of cycle lanes has increased and people are being encouraged to cycle or use scooters, but people who have a visual impairment or a hearing impairment find these very dangerous. They cannot either see, or maybe hear, them coming and the people are not always nice about it when an impact almost occurs.

We are encouraged to use public transport where that is possible, but for many disabled people, that is not possible. Buses can only facilitate maybe one wheelchair user at a time. The gap between the platform and the train still exists in many cases or the lift is not working at the train station and disabled people cannot access the platform in the first place.

Mr. Kearns gave the example of doing away with plastic straws. I accept that is well intentioned and required, but there is no viable alternative put in place. I myself know. I do not use a straw regularly but if I take my children to McDonalds and we have straws in our drinks, they are gone to mush by the time we get to the end of our drinks. What is there at the moment is not working. It is quite concerning they are not even biodegradable. I thought they were but they are not. There are quite a few issues there, and they are only a small handful.

We have to look also at how disabled people are affected by high costs. They are more likely to be affected by poverty. We see the introduction of carbon taxes and how that affects. People are encouraged to retrofit their houses but that is very expensive to do, and unless they have money upfront whereby they can avail of the matching grant, they are dependant on the warmer homes scheme for which there is a waiting list of two and half to three years. There are a lot of things that make sense and should happen but they are impacting disabled people when they should not be and these people's views are not being taken into account.

Dr. Mooney listed a number of organisations the Department has consulted, but the majority of those are not DPOs. Does Dr. Mooney engage with DPOs regularly? Article 4.3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, stipulates that organisations, Departments etc. must engage with DPOs, which are disabled people representing themselves. Are the needs of disabled people taken into consideration when developing policy?

Has the Independent Living Movement Ireland, ILMI, been consulted on different issues or is it aware of other DPOs that are? Is it meaningful consultation in that it is not just a box-ticking exercise? I have spoken to people on different committees such as strategic policy committees of local authorities who have given their views on the parking bays or outdoor dining areas that were introduced during Covid, which seemed like a great idea for some but affected disabled people by ending up moving parking bays without any consultation to places that were not suitable at all. Are the recommendations actually taken on board? There needs to be meaningful consultation where we are listening to people and taking their points of view into account because Covid, the Ukrainian war and wars in other places impact on disabled people much more than able-bodied people and we need to ensure we are prepared on how to respond to emergencies going forward.

Dr. Robert Mooney

I thank the Deputy for the questions. In response to her first question as to whether we engage actively with DPOs, 2022 was really the first year of the full implementation of the programme for the national dialogue on climate action. We reached out to a number of the organisations, as I mentioned, but we accept that was not comprehensive and there is significant room for improvement in 2023. We have learnt a lot from our experience in 2022 and we will be reaching out to a much broader range of organisations across all populations we are identifying that are vulnerable to the transition to carbon neutrality. That is quite a broad spectrum of organisations, people and stakeholders. We will very specifically be working with DPOs this year. Equally, as in my opening statement, we have moved from that focus group type model, from which we got a certain amount, to more deliberative workshop-style activity. We find that is much more effective in engaging and understanding the key challenges people are facing.

The core purpose of that is, in 2023, we will be defining the key performance indicators for our delivery of the national dialogue on climate action. That means engaging actively with people but also understanding the key challenges people are facing and how those challenges differ by different populations. That will allow us to say comprehensively what the key challenges we are facing are but which people with disabilities are facing disproportionately. That evidence base then allows us to go back to the policymakers in the areas the Deputy mentioned and state the key challenges and the specific issues being faced by people with disabilities and the asks of them as the policy leads. That addresses the Deputy's third question as to whether it is only consultation for the sake of consultation or how effective the insights or the asks of people are and if they are being reflected in policy. That is our core mechanism for ensuring they are effective at delivering policy. That has been achieved in a number of areas, not specifically regarding people with disabilities. We developed a very comprehensive programme last year, also not as effective in this area as we would have liked. That fed directly into the development of the Climate Action Plan 2023. All our data, insights etc., pulled together via the national dialogue, are analysed comprehensively and presented back to the policymakers in the development of the climate action plan. We are again improving on that process for 2023 and very much in this area.

Mr. Damien Walshe

I thank the Deputy for the question. I think we can all accept that the relevance and the awareness of statutory agencies and the political system around what a DPO is has increased substantially in the past couple of years, and credit to this committee for not only prioritising but also highlighting the role of DPOs. It is to be hoped it is something the committee will continue to do because it is a relatively new phenomenon in Ireland that we have these autonomous collective spaces led by disabled people. It is a credit to the Department that it is recognising there has not been that engagement but there is a commitment to do so. That needs to be amplified, not only at a national level to show that leadership in the climate action plans but, specifically, at a local level as well.

The Deputy asked, when DPOs represent their members, whether their suggestions are taken on board and if they are recognised. By and large, they are not. There are a number of committed disabled activists who continually raise issues about the danger of spared spaces, the removal of disabled parking bays - disabled parking bays that now open into roads pose a serious hazard to people with reduced mobility - and the movement of bus stops that assumes the sole reason people use public transport is to get to the city or town centre quickly and neglects that most people use them to get to points around their community and they are systems the public use to navigate society. What we need to do is amplify that voice.

Disabled people are beginning to self-organise, locally and nationally. There are commitments at a statutory level under the CRPD to have and resource that and to recognise their involvement, but there is a real need for leadership at a national level and this committee could be a driver for that. We all know there is a lot of ad hoc development that is done at a local level that is not guided by national policy.

If we take something like the design manual for urban roads and streets, DMURS, that is a document that guides how local authorities plan their spaces. That has not been reviewed since we ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD. There are huge parts of that do not comply with the CRPD that need be disability equality proofed. That would be hugely advantageous because we would go from a reliance on good people in local authorities who see the value in engaging with DPOs and who recognise that Exchequer funds should be spent on spaces that are inclusive versus the system we have now that is very ad hoc. Often, systems are designed and then after the fact, when the design stage begins, disabled people are invited to give their views. Then, unfortunately, as I said, they are often ignored.

It is to recognise the role of DPOs as an ongoing authentic space that needs to be engaged with by policymakers. Leadership must be shown by the Department, particularly in climate adaption and mitigation strategies, to say we are committing to these sustainable development goals.

There is a goal under sustainable cities and communities. One of those goals is around making human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. We are in danger of creating an issue around active travel and investing in public transport systems that are not safe and not sustainable for many disabled people. We need to get this right. Given the urgency of the demands around climate change, we cannot invest in systems we then need to replace in a very short space of time because they are not compliant with the CRPD.

Mr. Peter Kearns

I will give a quick example of something that is working. We support local DPOs. I support Sligo Disabled Persons' Organisation, which is facilitated through a public participation network, PPN. Through that, we have received money to make a videos for social media looking at the environmental barriers in terms of sustainable climate change. We made a video that looked at the new recycling centres. They are great except they are all up on paths and blocked by kerbs and they are quite high up. They are all brand new. The PPN has given us money to make the videos, which we can use and show to the local authorities. That is an example of where a dialogue approach is actually working.

We must also make sure the consultation is accessible because sometimes it is not, or Irish Sign Language, ISL, interpreters are not able to access it. There are different issues whereby DPOs are not funded. We should bear that in mind as well.

Mr. Kearns, Mr. Walshe, Dr. Mooney and Ms Gilmartin, who is joining us online, are very welcome. In looking through some of the submissions they gave us last night, it really struck me how important it is to have a cross-cutting approach to ensuring disability proofing with regard to every policy that comes before every Department and every Minister.

I have a number of questions. I will put two to Mr. Kearns and Mr. Walshe, one to Dr. Mooney and then one general question to whoever wishes to respond. I totally agree with what Mr. Kearns said with regard to climate being as much about social justice as it is about correcting the damage we have done to our planet. He rightly pointed out that because of the level of poverty and exclusion people with disabilities experience, they may not be able to afford greener alternatives. They are absolutely impacted by any taxes that are introduced to mitigate and drive change. People with disabilities can be absolutely left behind in terms of the climate action response. Does Mr. Kearns have any further examples of this? Does he perhaps have any suggestions of the types of measures that might be needed to respond to it?

The ILMI made a recommendation regarding the review of the design manual for urban roads and streets. Deputy Tully gave a good example of how people with disabilities are impacted with regard to road users. When we try to do something to encourage cycling etc., it can have a negative impact on people with disabilities.

I would agree that a review is correct in terms of reflecting the expectations and commitments under the UNCRPD. Does Mr. Kearns have anything further he wants to add regarding the need to implement universal design principles in new developments in every area, including ICT, public transport, the built environment etc.?

With regard to the Paris Agreement and the fact that is obviously rights-based and requires different countries to address climate change and respect, promote and consider respective obligations on human rights when acting, will Dr. Mooney discuss with us how climate change policies can be developed to be more inclusive and more rights-based so that they align with the Paris Agreement?

I will put the general question to both witnesses if they have a comment to make. I refer to the concerning issue whereby thousands of children and adults with disabilities have become trapped in institutions and face the risk of being abandoned because of the Ukraine war. Obviously, there is also an impact in Ireland whereby we have a significant number of people with disabilities who are in institutes and congregated settings. How do we develop appropriate measures for these individuals so that they are safeguarded and supported during humanitarian emergencies?

Mr. Damien Walshe

Mr. Kearns will take the first question on social justice and I will follow up on legislation with regard to the design manual and, beyond that, universal design, if that is okay.

Mr. Peter Kearns

I thank Senator O'Loughlin. On the Senator's third question about disabled people and children in institutions and day centres, in terms of social justice, that is where we approach the idea of dialogue with DPOs. It is where the collective voice can be built around that dialogue.

In terms of social justice, I teach in the community centre Sligo. In Sligo DPO, we have to pay for the room and the software on the computer while the local authority and HSE workers are coming there as part of the job. For us to engage in climate change dialogue with the system, therefore, we have to pay out of our own pockets for that dialogue. It would be great if the State structures and systems would recognise that. For local and national DPOs to work effectively, we need the resources to do that. With €2.6 billion going to the disability sector, how much of that is going to DPOs nationally and locally?

In terms of social justice and the sustainable development goals, SDGs, it is great to talk about dialogue beyond consultation. For that dialogue to happen around climate change and sustainable goals, DPOs need the reassurances to have that authentic space. Even though a person may have been born with an impairment or acquired an impairment, he or she does not necessarily have the capacity actually to reflect on that lived experience. The DPO coaches are the very people with whom many disabled people first come into contact, which would be a medical rather than just a social model on climate change.

DPOs are the only organisations that can work collectively with disabled people cross-impairment. It is not all about resources but resources need to be there for local DPOs to actually engage. There is no systematic funding for that to happen.

Mr. Damien Walshe

To follow on from that, if we take commitments made in the past, through the White Paper, to the community and voluntary sector as far back as 1995, the State has broadly accepted that communities that experience social exclusion and marginalisation need to be resourced to engage with statutory processes. By and large, the State recognises the collective spaces of marginalised communities as the best space to inform policy development. Mr. Kearns is right. We are only beginning to see the emergence of DPOs to provide that but it is absolutely crucial. As Mr. Kearns mentioned, more than €2 billion goes into the disability industry. That industry lobbies for itself; it does not represent disabled people. It can be seen through DPOs that disabled people want to engage with conversations around climate change, transport and inclusive education. Service providers are not engaging in those conversations because they want to talk about investing in services, many of which are contrary to the principles of the UNCRPD. If we are talking about social justice, there is a need to consider how disabled people's voices are heard and amplified. To have that voice heard will mean a commitment to resource DPOs.

A very good point was made around sustainable development goals on ending poverty, having decent work and reducing inequalities. Disabled people face additional barriers if we make changes to our society to mitigate the potentially disastrous effects of climate change. We need to recognise some people have additional needs, for example, around heating for houses. That has come up through the Indecon report commissioned by the Department of Social Protection that estimated the additional cost disabled people face outside of employment. Those costs were estimated at between €9,000 and €13,000 per annum, depending on people's needs. When we look at climate adaptation, there needs to be a mechanism to recognise that disabled people may require additional supports. On the point around social justice, it is crucial to engage directly with disabled people to think about systemic change, whether it relates to housing, transport, meaningful employment and education. The answers to those problems will come from that collective voice.

To follow on from Deputy Tully's point on individual activists feeling exhausted because they are ignored, we know there is collective power in disabled people coming together in DPOs. As Mr. Kearns can show, at a national level and through some of the work we have done locally, there are often statutory instruments, whether these are local authorities or education and training boards, that are only too willing to see what they can do better to promote inclusion and welcome the opportunity to engage with DPOs at a strategic level. That will be the crucial point.

It is important to have leadership on the legislation. The design manual has existed for more than 15 years and has not been reviewed. It is those kind of key instruments that will determine how our cities and towns will be designed. If they do not have disability, equality and inclusion at their core, then inevitably we will have instances where active travel or cycling, which we all recommend and say should be implemented, will have a deleterious impact on disabled people's ability to get involved in their local communities. We know that shared spaces and floating bus stops are dangerous. We have raised this with a number of local authorities, which seem to be keen to implement strategies that are being raised consistently by DPOs and individual disabled people, but they are still going ahead with that.

We need leadership from this committee that states we need a national conversation on this and, if we are promoting active travel, it cannot at the same time be at the expense of disabled people being able to access their own communities. We know some of the cycling lobby groups are also saying shared spaces are not safe for cyclists. They are not safe for anyone with reduced mobility, or younger or older people. We need to get that message out loud and clear.

There is very much a role for our national human rights institute, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, on this. It has powers under Articles 4.2, 30 and 10. Under Article 10, the IHREC can review existing or new legislation through an equality and human rights lens. It should definitely have a look at the design manual for urban and rural space under Article 10, ask whether it is complying with the UNCRPD. We very much would say it is not. It could also use Article 30. If there are consistent infringements on disabled people's rights by city or local authorities through provision of unsafe spaces, the IHREC can carry out an inquiry under Article 30. We think it should. It should send a message out because we need to move on from saying people could possibly do this, or inclusion as something of a soft sell. We say it is a legal right and there are legal avenues for people to explore. Leadership should be shown, ideally from this committee and the Deputies and Senators present, to hold our institutions to account in carrying out the functions they are legally bound to do.

Dr. Robert Mooney

I thank the members for their questions. To again address the issue of consultation in a broader sense, while I am responsible for national dialogue, a number of other key strategies and policy initiatives are actively engaging with people with disabilities on the design and implementation of climate policy. The local authority climate action plans are a good example of a key initiative that is beginning in earnest this year. A key element of that is active consultation at local authority level with a broad range of stakeholders and the inclusion of a community climate action officer with a specific duty of outreach to local organisations at that level. I cannot speak to the progress of that as it is my colleague's area but I will flag that is happening. A lot of work has gone in the past year and a half to establish mechanisms to ensure that people are engaged at that local authority level in order to address some of the issues that have been raised. Again, I cannot speak to other areas in detail but the circular economy, the national adaptation framework, sustainable transport and sustainable cities all have key requirements to engage with people with disabilities in their design and the delivery policy. It is not just within the national dialogue. In 2023, there are very key plans for active engagement with people with disabilities across all these key areas that have been mentioned.

On the rights-based approach, from the perspective of dialogue, as I mentioned, our approach is to establish what the key performance indicators are. That sounds like a very specific term but what I mean by it are what helps us deliver our ambition to become climate neutral by 2050 in a way that supports, enables and engages people in co-creating those solutions and improves people's quality of life. That is essentially what the social contract on climate action means. That is at the centre of the national dialogue and is our filter through which we are actively engaging with everybody across society. It is the recognition that this presents challenges for many people and very specifically those living with disabilities. When we are able to define those very clearly, we should be able to say these are the key challenges and barriers to taking action for the general population. There will then be specific additional challenges for people with disabilities, people living in coastal communities or others who are, as we say, vulnerable to that transition. The approach we are taking is about how we can deliver this but also improving that quality of life. That is the essence of the rights-based approach.

My colleague, Ms Gilmartin, who oversees our SDGs, has joined us. SDGs have been mentioned and they have a rights-based component.

Ms Hannah Gilmartin

It is lovely to join the committee today, albeit virtually. I work in the sustainable development goals unit. Some 92% of SDG targets overlap with human rights. Recently, in October, we published a new national implementation plan for the sustainable development goals. A key objective will be to look at that overlap between SDGs and the UNCRPD to see how we can use both together.

Policy proofing was mentioned. SDGs provide a strong framework that we hope to better use in future across government as part of a national policy framework. Strategic objective 1 in our national implementation plan is to better incorporate SDGs into the work of Departments. We see a key component of that as making sure the framework is being used by policymakers to inform their work. SDG 10.3 is about reducing inequality of outcome in policy. That SDG target should apply to all national policymakers and be taken into account by them. We recently commenced a dialogue on the principle of leaving no one behind. We held our national stakeholder forum meeting in January.

The focus of the meeting was to come up with a shared understanding of what it means to leave no one behind in an Irish context and developing recommendations for policymakers to take into account when developing policy to better ensure they do not leave people behind. That dialogue has commenced and is ongoing. We are very much aware of different groups we are trying to reach in terms of these conversations and stakeholder forum meetings. We have now set up a forum committee with a representative from a DPO on it. A key objective of ours going forward is that our engagement mechanisms are accessible and inclusive. We have taken a number of steps to ensure that. I would be happy to talk about that further if it is of interest.

As part of that conversation, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for the empowerment of certain key groups, including persons with disabilities. This list was brought to the stakeholder forum back in January to review and discuss whether we think that list is relevant to the Irish context. We have a few additions to the list for the Irish context. First, we are changing the wording to "disabled people", rather than "persons with disabilities". We are adding people who are living with long-term health issues and people who are living with mental health issues or are affected by addiction or both. Really, what we are trying to do at the moment is to bring together different strands of work across Government to create this framework that policymakers can use going forward to inform their work. It is a big undertaking and we will be working with colleagues across Departments, including the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which is the national lead on disability policy and the national point of contact for the UNCRPD but it is a work in progress and we are very keen to work with DPOs going forward as part of that work. We have commenced that already and it is proving very fruitful.

I thank the witnesses. I understand Mr. Kearns is originally from Leitrim. Again, I want to thank him for all the work. Certainly, counties Sligo and Leitrim were always ahead of the curve when it came to the independent living movement in Ireland. Indeed, I visited the Sligo Centre for Independent Living.. The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte was there, and we met Maria Mulligan and Rosaleen Doonan and all there. It really is state of the art and they are ahead of the curve. I want to put that on record. All aspects of non-medical supports are offered and it is a wonderful place to call into. Mr. Kearns should be very proud of the work he has done there and I thank him.

I want to raise two or three issues. I will go back to the issue of reusable straws, which I think was articulated by Deputy Tully. There is an issue that 70% of the litter in the EU bloc were caused by plastic stirrers and straws. Plastic utensils were banned. However, it is an issue that is raising its head. I did not realise it. I have two young children and we have kid's smoothies etc. While I may have thrown away many smoothies because I could not get the paper straw into the small hole, I did not think outside of that. From a disability point of view, however, it is another issue we need to try to address. Maybe we could come up with a common-sense proposal, because there are silicone straws and so many things. These are not working. Everybody in the hospitality industry wants to reduce the quantity of straws. However, maybe there could be an alterative where they could have a few that could be used in situations such as the one concerning Mr. Kearns. It is something that resonated with me, so I thank Mr. Kearns. We are passionate about combatting the damages to the environment but, as Mr. Kearns has rightly said, banning plastic straws has had a negative impact on his life. I wonder if there is any mechanism we could put in place to address that. There may be something for my kids' smoothies as well. I am just being funny, but I hear Mr. Kearns.

The fact is that there is an urgent need to engage with disabled persons' organisations to ensure that public investment is fully inclusive. Mr. Kearns just said that sometimes he is frequently seen as an afterthought. I am disappointed to hear that because I would have thought there should be a lot more dialogue and consultation. He might go into that as well.

Finally, Mr. Kearns said part of the circular economy Act provides for disability rights groups to be formally consulted as part of a process on the new circular economy strategies. What is exactly is he referring to? He might elaborate a little more on that. How does the circular economy affect the independent living movement in Ireland?

Mr. Kearns spoke about shared public spaces. Politicians like ourselves do not have all the answers and we very much welcome Mr. Kearns' interventions and his views. I saw that there are cycling lobby groups. We have a cycling lobby group in Sligo and they certainly challenge things. Nearly always we need those kind of views. Again, I thank witnesses very much for coming before the committee today. Their views are very welcome, but we have to act on them.

Mr. Peter Kearns

On the issue of plastic straws, we did lobby to keep the plastic straws. We were told comments such as, "We all have to do our bit". We were saying, "No, plastic straws are an access tool." At that point, which was a couple of years ago, there was not that dialogue with DPOs, because DPOs were not recognised as the voice of disabled people. A lot of people say to me, "Did you not try bamboo straws or metal straws?" Especially regarding metal straws, if anybody has basic physics, they will know that if you stick a metal straw into a latte, you are going to burn your lips. Actually, two years ago a woman in England was killed by a metal straw. She had a cup of coffee, she got burned, she had a spasm and the metal straw right went up through her palate and killed her. There are issues like that with metal straws. A spasm can knock out teeth as well. Plastic straws therefore have a proven record as an access tool.

Continued dialogue with DPOs is needed. Back in Sligo, we are getting great work done on shared spaces for people with regional impairments or who are blind. If they go across O'Connell Street in Sligo, they do not know where the path ends or starts. The Sligo DPO is speaking with the council to try to change that. We are really here to promote the idea of dialogue with disabled people. The DPO does a lot of work to build the confidence of disabled people to speak up. The disability sector, as Mr. Walshe says, is a business. They are quite keen to keep their businesses going. They do not speak for disabled people, whereas the local DPOs have that structure to achieve that dialogue about looking at the barriers etc., and listening to the lived experience of disabled people to come up with solutions as well.

Mr. Damien Walshe

The issue with the DPOs is reflective of the fact that they are a relatively new phenomenon in Ireland. Mr. Kearns mentioned the work he is supporting work in the Border counties. We are also supported by the Department of Rural and Community Development under the new community development programme to support the development of DPOs in Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny through our virtual online inclusive community empowerment, VOICE, programme. These are brand-new initiatives. We now have a situation where disabled people are only beginning to see the potential for DPOs to be a transformative space and the critical voice in trying to begin to build up dialogue. It is often the case that after the fact, disabled people are forced to say that a space is not working for them. We do not want to be in confrontational spaces; we want to move into co-creation. However, as Mr. Kearns highlighted, the shared spaces present a real physical danger to many disabled people. Aesthetically, designers think they look great. If we had real co-creation of policy and a review of existing legislation such as the design manual, we would have disabled people acknowledging that sustainability is a necessity for society. However, we need to look at the sustainable development goals, SDGs, around sustainable, inclusive, safe cities and towns.

We need to look at our commitments under the CRPD and we also need to be a leader in this. If we look at the international literature, what we see in Ireland is reflective of pretty much every other country, namely, that in the absence of disabled people in environmental justice spaces, their voices are not being heard. Decisions have been made that actually exclude disabled people further.

Internationally, we need to think about models of development education that we need to promote within those spaces. Organisations based in Ireland that have an international context need to also think about engaging with DPOs. Senator O'Loughlin mentioned institutionalisation. There have often been instances where Irish charities were inadvertently responsible for institutionalising disabled people. They have funded organisations that have denied disabled people their rights. We have worked with organisations such as Comhlámh and the Christian Blind Mission, CBM, which were very keen to emphasise, from an international perspective on global climate change, the need to internationalise the discussion around the role of DPOs to inform local solutions as well. It is not just about randomly assembling individual disabled people. It is about investing in bringing disabled people together for them to identify what the key issues are and to strategise about what they would like to see informing their local or national spaces. There are trends towards that at a national level. Ms Gilmartin and her team in the SDGs have been proactive in engaging with us and other DPOs. That is welcome because it recognises that DPOs are the authentic voices of disabled people that can and will inform conversations around the SDGs and climate justice.

Dr. Robert Mooney

It has already been said very eloquently that on the SDG side Ms Gilmartin began proactive engagement with DPOs earlier this year. The national dialogue programme begins pretty much in earnest in April or May. We very much look forward to building on the success that Ms Gilmartin has already delivered via the SDG programme and actively engaging with DPOs via a number of key mechanisms.

I have mentioned looking at the existing literature insights and key challenges for people. In addition, we will be delivering some of the engagement mechanisms as a dedicated workshop for people with disabilities involving DPOs and others in the sector. This will ensure that mechanisms like our online consultation are accessible, people are aware of this and it is communicated via the right channels. We also need to identify specific categories in our work to understand and identify what those voices are and understand what the specific challenges are.

We are also making space in the national climate stakeholder forums, ensuring we are inviting participants from those groups to participate across a broad range of issues, not specifically talking about issues of disability. It could be about the other issues that people face and what the disability issue is, in and around that space, whether it is transport, built environment or the circular economy.

The insights from all those activities will be analysed and we will be providing iterative interim reports from all our activities throughout the year. This means we will be able to provide short-term feedback to participants to critique what they said and identify the key challenges and the calls to action for policy across a number of areas. We will be providing that back to the policy leads for those areas. It was a very systematic and effective programme in 2022 and we will be building on that in 2023.

I cannot respond to certain specific policy programmes like the circular economy because I am not au fait with exactly what the plans are there. However, as part of the national dialogue, we will be engaging with people across a full range of climate issues. As I understand it, as part of the local authority climate action plans, there is a very proactive engagement programme being delivered across each local authority level. In addition to those elements, a number of other engagement and public participation programmes will be delivered across the different policies that I have mentioned already.

I thank the witnesses for attending. Mr. Kearns has given a lot of time to this committee. It is nice to thank him in person today rather than remotely. It is great to have the Department here to get an understanding of where it is at on these issues. The intersections of climate and disability are an increasingly important topic which does not get enough attention. We know that disabled people are among the most adversely affected in an emergency. That was one of the key topics of the CRPD this year in light of the disaster in Ukraine and how that unfolded for disabled people there.

Also, the few references to disability in the State's climate adaptation policies are cursory in nature. For example, there is no reference to disability in the Climate Action Plan 2019, while the 2023 plan only refers to employment activation for those disabled people on the live register and to minimum levels of disabled parking. This is indicative of larger issues and we need to ensure that all of our climate policies are disability-proofed and vice versa.

The ILMI has clearly articulated the importance of positively pursuing inclusive climate action and planning. We are clearly failing to achieve that, which undermines claims about a fair transition. One of the areas highlighted was the local mobility initiatives conducted without meaningful consultation that undermined people's right to access and inclusion. Do the witnesses have any more examples and details on their impact? I would be very helpful for the committee to hear them. The example of the unintentional banning of plastic straws very effectively shows the impact of the lack of consultation. Can the witnesses outline other ways in which disability needs have not been considered in climate actions or environmental policies and the effect that has on people?

I have some questions for the witnesses from the Department. One of the issues highlighted today that is helpful for the committee to know is that DPOs are not currently engaged properly, as required under the CRPD. How has the CRPD been explained to the Department? What do the witnesses understand the Department's obligations to be? At present, does the Department have capacity to engage in participative climate policy and decision-making processes with DPOs? In previous meetings, we have heard that this requires a different way of doing things and different time commitments compared to other consultation methods. Has the Department been equipped not just with the knowledge but also the skills and resources to do that?

Mr. Peter Kearns

I will give an example in relation to a point Senator Tully raised earlier about bus transport. I am still coming down from last Sunday. We won The Irish Times theatre award for No Magic Pill, the first Irish play with disabled actors. Last August, we spent eight weeks rehearsing in Artane. Three of the actors were wheelchair users. Two of the actors had to take turns every day to get the bus. There was one bus every hour.

They had to take turns getting there and back every day because the bus would only take one wheelchair user. The job was for eight weeks. They had to get to Artane and rehearse all day, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., and then try to get back home to the other side of the city. That is a simple example of the situation for disabled people who are working professionals. Every day, the wheelchair users had to take turns depending on who got the bus first. That is an issue in relation to public transport. Disabled people have always been campaigning for access to public transport. Even in the play, No Magic Pill, the characters are pushing for access to public transport and not for special buses. Disabled people have a long history of promoting public transport, going back at least as far as the 1980s, when I was involved. That is a simple example of two disabled actors who won the award for best play and had to take turns getting the bus.

Mr. Damien Walshe

To follow up with specific examples, it pains me to say this as someone from Cavan but on behalf of everyone in rural Ireland, we have to accept that what happens in Dublin inevitably gets rolled out at a national level. There are very worrying trends at a national level, particularly in the Dublin city area, of promoting the ideas of floating bus stops. They are clearly not designed for anyone who uses public transport and they are certainly not designed with anyone who has a mobility issue in mind. Anyone who is a parent of small children should be aware that these present a real danger. The idea is of a bus stop that is disconnected from the pavement, with a cycle lane bisecting the pavement and the bus stop. As people get off the bus, they have to cross a cycle lane to reach safety. The idea is that this will promote greater access for cyclists. I cycle, but I certainly do not want to cycle into the middle of a bus stop. However, their installation has begun. The real danger and threat they present to pedestrians, regardless of impairment, have been flagged but they are being rolled out on an ongoing basis. We feel there is a potential case to be made by disabled people against Dublin City Council under the Equal Status Acts, if they were supported by bodies such as the Irish Human Rights Equality Commission.

We should not have to get into a space like this. This comes back to fundamental engagement with DPOs. I do not think there is an intention to try to injure disabled people in designing these systems but they are being designed by people who do not use public transport and do not have impairments. They are not engaging with DPOs. They would argue they are trying to create a mechanism to allow more people to safely cycle to and from work or to socialise. That is a good idea, but not at the expense of the inclusion of disabled people in society. That is a very concrete example. If it becomes the norm in Dublin and is not challenged, it will become the norm in Cork, Galway and elsewhere. It is about considering the unintended consequences of designing a system that is promoting active travel and seems intended to reduce our reliance on carbon-based transport but which will have a very real effect on people with disabilities.

E-scooters are good in theory if they reduce the numbers of people using cars. However, they need to be regulated. They travel at great speed. They tend not to be used by people who have a good understanding around pedestrians. We are introducing them in shared spaces despite the fact they are silent. We have examples from the UK and the Netherlands where e-scooters are having a real impact on the ability of disabled people to navigate society. Let us put a system in place now whereby we design urban and rural spaces that are inclusive and promote active travel but not at the expense of disabled people participating in society.

Dr. Robert Mooney

I thank the Deputy for the question. I cannot speak on behalf of the Department across all policy areas about how comprehensively or specifically various different elements of disability inclusion and conventions have been applied. I know that within the circular economy and the area of transport, responsibility for which sits with the Department of Transport, these key considerations have been applied in the latest strategies. In 2022, we reached out to organisations and communities of people with disabilities. We recognised from that engagement it was not effective. We are now applying a much more systematic approach, including those key considerations. As I said, Ms Gilmartin and her team on the sustainable development goal side have led out on that in 2023. They will bring that into our national dialogue programme.

The core component is that it is not only our Department that is working on this challenge. As Ms Gilmartin mentioned, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is the lead Department for this area. We are actively engaging with that Department on the best approach to take and how we can deliver a more systematic approach to the inclusivity of this form of engagement across all Government policies relating to climate, which is the specific area about which I am talking. I reiterate that the purpose of the dialogue is to engage more broadly with people in society. There are some components of the dialogue that are our policy priority areas, about which we want to talk to people. However, much of the dialogue allows for the emergence of key challenges and issues people want to raise. We are hearing from people about the challenges they are experiencing. We are not prescriptive in that sense. In that way, we can engage with a broad range of people across policy areas and then communicate those challenges to the policy leads across government and in our Department. Ms Gilmartin might also like too respond to the question that was posed.

Ms Hannah Gilmartin

We have been working a lot with the National Disability Authority. It has clarified for us our obligations under the CRPD. What will be useful for our work, going forward, is that as part of our "leave no one behind" piece of work, we are going to do an audit of existing tools, guidance, guidelines and advice and we will put them into a central area. It will not be specifically focused on the area of disability but that will be a key component. It is about having that central list for people across Departments, including policymakers and the different people who lead on engagement, to refer to and to think about whether they have considered the different steps they need to take into account to leave no one behind. We are very aware that the National Disability Authority has recently issued guidance on taking a universal design approach to participation. It is about ensuring our colleagues also know that. Those tools will help, as will having a central area and central guidance to which people can refer to find the relevant documents and links that are available. Things do sometimes get lost in the mix.

I thank Mr. Walshe, Mr. Kearns, Mr. Mooney and Ms Gilmartin for their input. "Leave no one behind" is a good slogan but, unfortunately, many in the disabled community have been left behind. That is not only the case here. It is also the case in Europe and in other countries. There is certainly no great emphasis on pushing these issues. The disabled community general faces greater daily challenges than anyone else. When it comes to climate change, those challenges are further enhanced.

People are reliant on petrol and diesel vehicles at the moment. That is going to have to change and that will bring massive challenges. Perhaps the witnesses could outline some of those challenges. There are obviously monetary challenges but there are also challenges for people themselves and how they transition to a carbon-neutral society or move in that direction. There are enormous challenges.

Will the Department officials discuss how the public consultation process is fully accessible to people with disabilities? I know they have mentioned a few things but I would like to hear more. How does the Department consult the disability community and its representative organisations on climate policy? A human rights approach to policy is required by the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. How is that applied in how the issue is addressed? I ask the witnesses to respond.

Can the representatives from the ILMI discuss the level of consultation they have had with the Department and local authorities on our climate action response? What can they recommend that would allow standards to be developed or enhanced? Can they discuss the ways in which the needs of people with disabilities are taken into consideration at the beginning of climate policy development and the impact this has?

Local authorities have their development plans. Can our guests say whether there has been an approach to climate action in local area development plans that contemplates people with disabilities? Is engaging with local authority planners part of the process?

Dr. Robert Mooney

I thank the Deputy for his questions. As already stated, in the context of the dialogue, this year we are looking to specifically identify what those key challenges are by engaging actively with DPOs, stakeholder groups and organisations that represent a broad range of people with disabilities.

Ms Gilmartin will talk about the mechanisms the SDG forum has already used this year. These proved very effective. Part of that programme will be: examining the existing challenges; what is the literature telling us in other areas and jurisdictions; what are people doing well; what is effective; what has and has not worked; and designing our engagement programme. We will be finalising that design in the next number of weeks. That will include looking at: how we engage via workshops; what are the specific challenges when trying to deliver a workshop that involves people with disabilities, etc; how do we overcome any challenges; and what mechanisms we should put in place. To answer an earlier question, we will provide more time with respect to the additional challenges that may arise.

Online consultation lends itself well to people engaging with the process in order to provide insights and inputs in respect of the climate conversation Equally, we invite representative groups to the national stakeholder forums to make presentations. Those forums involve engagement by between 120 and 150 individuals who represent the various groups, organisations and stakeholders and who speak on their behalf. We engage actively with people. We do so through qualitative workshops and by bringing representatives from the organisations in question together. We also hold a series of in-depth interviews whereby we identify key individuals in society and stakeholder groups in circumstances where we feel we need one-to-one conversations in order to get further insights into the challenges they face or that are faced by the organisations for which they work. We try to deliver a comprehensive programme to capture those insights. There is a rigorous analysis process and a process of feeding that back to the key policy leads in the Department and across government. I will now hand over to Ms Gilmartin, who can comment on the particular methods or processes that were used.

Ms Hannah Gilmartin

As stated earlier, when we were setting up our stakeholder forum committee, which is responsible for collaboratively designing our national stakeholder forum meetings, last year, we made sure to have one representative from a DPO on the committee. The committee comprises 12 people from different sectors and backgrounds. We sent an invite to a wide range of DPOs. We are very fortunate to have a representative from Disabled Women Ireland on the committee.

A key focus for us is to make our national stakeholder forum meetings as open and accessible to everyone. We have done this in a number of ways. We make sure that the promotional material is written in plain English. It is simply just saying that everyone is welcome and that we will facilitate different requirements. We have made sure that the venues are wheelchair accessible. We have sign language interpreters. We have a quite room for people who might need to take a sensory break or their own sort of break. The feedback from our forum meeting in January indicated that it would be good to have live transcription for people who process information better by reading. We have that option in place for the forum meeting in April. We are not trying to say we are experts now but we have started the conversation and it is an opportunity to hear what people need to engage with us at the stakeholder forum meetings. In addition, we have included people with lived experience. A representative of AsIAm spoke at our meeting in January. We are on the right track, and we want to keep learning from each stakeholder meeting going forward.

In July, we will present Ireland's 2023 voluntary national review, which is a progress report on Ireland's implementation of the SDGs, to the United Nations. We have invited the National Disability Authority to submit a chapter for inclusion in the official report. So the authority will consider how are the SDGs being implemented in terms of disabled people and are they being implemented with disabled people. We very much look forward to that contribution.

Mr. Damien Walshe

On engagement with planners and local structures, and going back to the Local Government Reform Act 2014, there are many potential avenues for disabled people to engage, through their public participation networks, local community development committees, and to influence the local economic community plans. I may sound like a broken record, but DPOs are relatively new. The work we do is led by Mr. Kearns in the Border counties and by our colleagues, Paula Soraghan and Nicola Meacle, in the seven counties in the South. It is only in establishing a connection through those statutory spaces that we can influence how to build sustainable inclusive communities. We have worked with Pobal. Last January, Pobal published a guide that informs local economic community plans and outlines how to include voices that are often marginalised. We wrote a section about the importance of engaging with disabled persons' organisations.

By and large, we have not had the engagement we would like with the planning sections. We would like to establish that relationship through the Local Government Management Agency.

In the absence of people seeing the value of people engaging with DPOs, it is regulation that counts. When we were in here last week we talked about personal assistant services being reliant on good people in the system going the extra mile to try and undo the lack of systemic approaches to engaging disabled people. We need to have a system that regardless of who is responsible for designing urban and rural spaces, whoever is responsible at a local authority level, that it is not whether they want to engage with disabled people. There are very clear standards of what constitutes inclusive, sustainable safe spaces. That gives them the guidance then to engage with disabled people confidently and from the initial stage so not coming to you with a fait accompli and saying, "This is what we are going to go to Part VIII about" because we do not want a situation that it is seen as confrontational. We do not want a situation where we are solely pointing out flaws. However, we do point out flaws when needs be because there are requirements for disabled people to participate in society as equals but, as Mr. Kearns has said, we would like to move to that dialogue because that is what will allow for very real strategic investment of Exchequer funds that meets everyone's needs.

Mr. Peter Kearns

To expand on that point and in terms of what Mr. Walshe has said, I am based up Leitrim. I am involved in activities there and in County Sligo and the Border counties. In terms of a systemic process, in 2018 Sligo County Council adopted the social model for disabilities but it took a lot of work to get there. Adopting it is the easy part; the hard part is implementing the social model in a systematic way through the council. That's now starting to reap rewards. There are platforms like the Sligo Public Participation Network that now recognise that Sligo DPO is now the voice of disabled people, so they are going to us directly and not necessarily going to the service providers. That is our experience across most of the country. Service providers do not have the mandate or structures to speak for disabled people. The Sligo DPO has a mandate to speak with and for disabled people. It is a long process to get the local systematic platforms to recognise that the DPOs are the voice of disabled people.

We have had to do a lot of disability equality workshops for councillors and all of that over the year to get them to recognise that disability is not about a cure or about fixing an impairment, it is about looking at the daily barriers and fixing those. Quite a lot of resources have to go into capacity building a system to talk to your DPO.

It frustrates me so much that I actually feel insulted when I read, "Leave no one behind". We are constantly leaving people behind and the Departments are constantly leaving people behind. Unless we action this out, it means nothing on a piece of paper. It annoys me. Maybe that is because I am from a minority group. I had a conversation with Ms Gilmartin in the audiovisual room. This is not an attack on her personally, but regarding the system around sustainable development goals, Ireland is not reaching its goals. I will provide one example, which I know really well. It links to this issue but it is around the Traveller community. It is good to put on the record that we are having this conversation. In January 2021, there was an outbreak of hepatitis on a halting site in Dublin. That came from dirty water. The council never owned up to it and said it was because of the pipes and the dirty water on the site. It found another problem, it said it was because of a scarf that blocked up the shores. There was no such thing. How can we, in this day and age, get hepatitis from unclean water? We see this in poorer countries, unfortunately. That is my problem with the sustainable development goals. They are not inclusive of all communities.

I understand a lot of work is going on and a group has now been up. A witness said there are 12 representatives in that group. We should look at a community focus and work intensely with a community, for example, people with disabilities, and do 12 weeks. These reports have very little action in them. A witness said last week that she was sick to the teeth of reports that were not implemented and coming to the committee and trying to have her voice heard as an activist for implementation. We need to focus on climate change and how it will impact people with disabilities and people from other ethnic minority groups. When you are really poor or you are just trying to live your life day by day, not having personal assistance and struggling every day, you do not give a damn about climate change. My colleague, Senator Ruane, said that when you are in the pits of society, you do not care because you have bigger problems. The last thing on your mind is climate. I spoke to the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, along with National Traveller Money Advice & Budgeting Service, NTMABS, about how we must be inclusive of people from different communities in the discussion around climate change. The sustainable goals are looking at bringing people in but we need a bigger conversation around climate action and climate change because people are not included in these conversations. Disabled people definitely are not included in these conversations. I would like to hear the witnesses' opinions on that.

Public transport, instead of getting better, is getting worse. Mr. Walshe mentioned e-scooters, which are not regulated. When I get off the bus in Ballyfermot, I have nearly been killed by them. There is no law really around them. That has an impact on people. I saw in Killybegs that disabled people are treated very much like Traveller people. They are expected to police themselves. I will use Killybegs as an example. I think there are only two spaces for disabled parking. An activist there goes around himself and tells people they are not meant to park there and are meant to leave that spot for a disabled person or someone with a pass. It is as simple as that. It is people policing themselves. We must get people to appear before the committee. I do not know which Minister is responsible for making sure there are equal parks for our children. One minute it is the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, then it is the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. There are so many Ministers but we keep kicking things down the road. We are leaving thousands of people behind. Regarding climate, we need to get the Ministers before the committee. We need to see what the Minister for Transport is doing to protect people with disabilities on our roads and what the plan is going forward and the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. If anything, that is what I want out of today's committee hearing.

Mr. Damien Walshe

To move from rhetoric to actions is music to my ears and to any disabled person listening in. It would be really helpful for this committee to bring that in. We must move away from the soft sell of awareness of the issues disabled people face, to enforcement. We need to talk about rights, not charity and things like access to public transport, as Mr. Kearns said, not as an additional add-on or something that might be done, but as something embedded in the very core of how the Exchequer spends its funding. If the committee was to do one thing based on today's discussion around building sustainable, safe and inclusive towns and cities, it should be to bring in the people responsible for planning and ask them how they will ensure make their work compliant with the UNCRPD because it clearly is not. As Mr. Kearns said, there are many concerns, whether in small or large towns or cities, that disabled people are seeing a regression in the rights they have fought hard for over 20 or 30 years, which is being done under the rhetoric of sustainability. They are not incompatible. In fact, one of the sustainable development goals, as I am sure Ms Gilmartin will point out, is around sustainable, inclusive and safe towns and human communities. That would be a very useful action because we do not see at a local level that there is a genuine understanding.

Going back to Deputy Ellis's point around whether that engagement is there, Mr. Kearns said yes. We are starting to see the fruits of our labour and that of other DPOs, including members of the DPO Network. That takes time but we cannot wait for people to do the right thing, as the infrastructure of DPOs becomes resourced and developed. There must be some form of regulation and oversight of how our cities and towns are developed. Going back to the point around public transport, there have been instances of disabled people being segregated from society. There has been a reliance on special buses. It is not part of a modern, 21st-century society that disabled people are reliant on a charity to bring them from A to B, to that charity. Where are the choice, control and agency for someone to decide they are going to get the bus into town, because that is what everyone else does, and for them to know when they get into town they do not need to worry about getting knocked over by an e-scooter or a cyclist and when they go to a space, they can navigate it safely like everyone else should expect to do. One action would be to move from awareness that this is an issue to consideration of what our obligations are under Article 9 of the UNCRPD, under the sustainable development goals and our public sector duty, under section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act.

It is so tokenistic and insulting, the attitude that there you go now, there is space for one wheelchair user, we have met our equality obligations, off you go. People still do not feel free. It is appalling in today's world. It is not about looking for special treatment, it is just having the same opportunities to be able to live your life.

Mr. Damien Walshe

It is again about a move away from some level of tokenistic box-ticking. Many of the Deputies and Senators asked if the consultation has been meaningful and whether disabled people, through their DPOs, felt their voices have been heard. This is not to be critical, we are building up strong relationships with many statuary bodies that recognise that commitment under the CRPD, which is welcome.

This is an area where we have seen less progress and engagement and where it would be useful for the leadership shown by Senators and Deputies within this committee to accelerate a conversation around how disabled people's voices are heard, especially with respect to the issues we have mentioned specifically related to sustainability, the sustainable development goals and climate justice. Unfortunately, the Senator is right to say disabled people have been left behind and many of the measures happening now will leave them further behind. That is the kind of thing we would like to see moving from rhetoric to actions.

Mr. Peter Kearns

On DPOs and communications and dialogue, we use a lot of creative methods, like drama and video. With that in mind, we are setting up a disabled persons' disability arts organisation. We have found disabled artists are coming to us and they all want to do art and creative work on climate change and disabled people. I also work with my colleagues up in Belfast in an arts and disability forum. They had a disability arts DPO for years. They did it years ahead of us. In the South, we do not have a disabled artists' DPO. Even though we have disabled people coming to us wanting to explore climate change, the system is not there at the moment. It falls to us in ILMI. Many people would say we are boxing above our weight in terms of resources, but disabled people are coming to us to set up local DPOs because we are seen as the organisation which has that skill. Local DPOs or specific issue-based DPOs take a lot of resources and confidence. One woman yesterday came from Carlow. She is involved in the VOICE project down there, but she has rely on a local special bus to get from Carlow to Dublin. She could not rely on the public transport. We want to give her the confidence to use public transport, but she herself has to go back to the service providers to get that. It is a long process to build up the collective voice of disabled people and the resources are not there at the moment to do that.

To be clear, I am not attacking the two people from the Department who are in the room. It would be unfair for me as a public representative to be attacking two individuals. That is not my case at all. Having the DPOs involved in these discussions is a step forward and we should look at some of the positive things. Unfortunately, there is much we need to do as a committee as well with the different responsible Departments. I want it on the record I am not attacking two individuals because that would not be fair, but there is much more we need to do.

Dr. Robert Mooney

To address the issue of delivery, the function of the annexe of actions in the climate action plan is to set out step by step and action by action how the policy ambition set out in the plan is going to be delivered. Again, that sits with a different unit and I cannot speak to the details of it. The purpose of it is to set out how exactly we are going to achieve our key policy ambitions. In addition to that and in recognition of the need for urgency, the Minister, as I am sure members are aware, established six cross-Government delivery task forces in some key areas, including citizen engagement and climate literacy, which is the one I actively work on. The purpose of them is to look at which actions in the plan need most urgent attention and how we bring not only Departments but other agencies together to discuss the practical realities of delivering them and to accelerate the delivery of those actions. I say that to give a programmatic point of view on the rest of the issues raised there.

I will hand over to Ms Gilmartin in a moment but on the dialogue, I reiterate that last year we identified populations we considered vulnerable in the transition to carbon neutrality. That is a long-winded way of saying it, but it included people with disabilities, people living in coastal communities, people living in rural Ireland, older people, younger people, members of the Travelling community

etc. We had a series of focus groups. Some of that was exploratory, in that it was the first year of the national dialogue in its entirety and the full programme. We learned a lot from the work we did last year and as I said we are progressively developing and improving the means and methods of engagement with those populations, as well as the identification of other populations vulnerable to the transition that we may not have realised. Building on the work and the governance structures Ms Gilmartin has established around the SDGs, as part of the national dialogue we have a structure that includes other Departments and State agencies we engage with regularly in an interdepartmental working group. They give us insights and input into how we should engage and what key groups we should be engaging with in that way. Thus, we are building a more systematic programme of outreach this year.

As to the impact of the calls to act we received from those groups, we do not just prepare reports discussing what was said and what we heard, but we identify key calls to action per sectoral area and present that back to those policy leads in a timely fashion to feed into the annual development of the climate action plan. As far as the dialogue goes, our function is to bring those insights together, present it back to the people developing policies and actions in those areas and say this is what we heard from these different groups and these are the challenges and the barriers for them to delivering climate action. As we have clearly stated from the last few years' work we have done, people are aware. There is nearly 100% awareness of it. People are eager to get involved, as is clearly demonstrated today, but people are struggling a little with where and how to start taking actions and how to access action. That is the space we are moving into in 2023.

Some of the SDG issues were mentioned as well, so I hand over to Ms Gilmartin on those.

Ms Hannah Gilmartin

I will mention a few points. I thank Senator Flynn for her comments on leaving no one behind. I think we are all in agreement people have been left behind and continue to be. The principle of leaving no one behind was developed as part of the SDGs and agreed internationally as something to work towards. We in the SDG unit are very much trying to start that conversation on leaving no one behind and how policymakers can better consider different groups so they are better set up to avoid leaving anyone behind, because there are always unintended consequences of policy. It is a real challenge, as the Senator mentioned. Responsibilities are shared across Departments. The Department of Rural and Community Development looks after many of the community engagement pieces. The recent guidance on engaging with marginalised communities was referenced earlier. It was published by Pobal and the Department of Rural and Community Development, whereas the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth looks after disability policy. Therefore, there is a real challenge to bring all the different groups and policymakers together so a coherent approach is taken.

The real possibility the SDGs offer is this framework. It would be ideal if we could get a tangible framework policymakers can refer to so when they are considering their policies, they are considering the groups that have been identified as potentially being ones who could be left behind and have that central area of information being brought together from all the Departments to create a more centralised guidance document people can refer to as a starting point. Anything you put down on paper is always only going to be a starting point because it always comes back to conversations with the relevant people.

We are moving in the right direction but there is still a huge amount of work to be done in this area.

I thank our guests for joining us today. I was listening to the discussion in the office before I came down. There are a number of issues that I worry about. We have a huge body of consultation and the paperwork gets done but let us look at the issue of on-street dining, for example, and how that was done. In fairness, that was done in a hurry to try to help pubs and restaurants during Covid but what consultation has happened since then with people with disabilities, to see how it can be reconfigured so that it works?

The second issue of concern is transport. I come from the predominantly rural constituency of Galway East. I heard Senator Flynn talking earlier about buses nearly knocking people down or scooters nearly knocking people down as they get off the bus. I would love to be able to get off a bus but we do not have buses in my constituency and that is a fact. In terms of the disabled population in this country and the Indecon report, it is essential that the funding to meet the additional cost-of-living expenses for people with disabilities is put in place. It is an absolute disgrace that we do not have any transport supports for people with disabilities. They have all been abandoned. We have a primary medical certificate requirement and an application process but no appeals process. The appeals board resigned because the process is not fit for purpose. That board has been vacant for so long now. We do not need to have any more dialogue on that. We have to call it out for what it is, which is a disgrace. It is totally disrespectful that nothing has been put in place at this stage. This committee has been strong on that issue and we have to call it out for what it is.

I am concerned about the active travel issue. We are spending a huge amount of money on active travel. Indeed, Government policy is that we will spend more on active travel than on roads. It sounds great in theory but has the policy been disability-proofed before the money is spent? It is important that we analyse what we are doing and how we are doing it.

I was cringing when our guests were describing the floating bus stops. I walk to Leinster House from my digs during the week and it is a bit of a challenge for me, as a fully-able person, to cross roads and navigate through the people coming at me, whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and so forth. What we are trying to do in this country is fit in active travel infrastructure and cycle lanes without standing back and checking for unintended consequences. We have to suss them out. We have made enough mistakes already. We should stop for a minute and make sure we get this right. We must do the consultation properly.

I agree with Senator Flynn that the consultation has to be at local level. It is okay to have big, citizen-assembly type conversations but we also need to get down to the grassroots. Our guests spoke about tokenism and in lots of towns in my constituency, we have disabled car parking spaces. We have also spent money installing ramps off the footpaths to improve access but there is no enforcement. In some cases, one would cringe. My plea to the public is not to park on footpaths because they are a lifeline for lots of people and not to park in disabled parking spaces because they are there for a reason. People have got to think and as our guests would say, "Come walk in my shoes".

My message to Dr. Mooney and Ms Gilmartin is that while I respect what they are doing and what is contained in the policy documents, the local authorities do not have the resources to implement a lot of stuff. Furthermore, who is taking responsibility and who is accountable if something is not right? It would be a damning indictment if Dublin City Council was taken to court over floating bus stops. That is not right. It is actually costing the State and everybody else money. We should just go back, look at it and determine how to do it better in order to facilitate everyone.

It has been a very enlightening morning. The problems being faced are very clear but those problems are not insurmountable. We just have to look at the situation differently and admit that we made a lot of mistakes in the past. We need to have climate action and a just transition. A just transition is a great buzzword but it must apply to everybody. As with the digital age, we are not supposed to be leaving anybody behind. We need to make sure the transition is just but not only on paper. People with disabilities need to feel safe crossing a road. They need to have access to grant aid so that they can get a taxi if they want to go into town to meet friends from Belclare or wherever. There must be equality of service for everybody. It might cost a bit more money but it is a worthwhile investment. That is what we need to do.

Mr. Peter Kearns

I thank the Deputy, who made some very good points. I come from Dromahair in Leitrim and access by bus is not available. I am not able to go to Carrick-on-Shannon, Sligo or Manorhamilton. Disabled people do not have a choice in terms of accessing local public transport. If there was a consultation dialogue platform to listen to disabled people, I am sure people would take on board our concerns and issues.

Deputy Ellis spoke earlier about cars. I would love to have a new car and just press a start button but the cost is prohibitive. Most disabled people are working class or from a background of poverty and the cost of a new car, even with support for vehicle registration tax, VRT, and so on, is beyond them. In the last ten years, apart from the barrier of the plastic straw, there is also the barrier of my car. I used to turn the car key on the outside but in the past few years, because automatic cars cannot be left running, I have to get into my car, put my left foot on the brake and hang out of the car with the door wide open to turn the key. These are two new barriers that I did not face ten years ago. They are both the result of climate action and climate change policies.

A lot of my colleagues in Leitrim and Sligo told me to make sure to point out that when getting out of one's car into the traffic, as a wheelchair user, one has to have the door wide open. I have to have the door wide open just to turn on the engine. A lot of disabled parking spaces now are such that we are getting out into the traffic. In Sligo we had a student carpark that was a safe place for disabled people to park their cars. There were six spaces and we could get out safely but that carpark has gone since January. It has been turned into a green area. Those six safe parking spaces in Sligo are gone. My colleagues were very keen to tell me to make sure I identified that problem here today.

Unfortunately, because the Sligo DPO was set up only recently, up to two years ago there was no platform for us to identify that at the time. Sligo DPO is up and running since last year. Now we are trying to identify the platforms for engaging with the disabled persons' networks and the county council. It is about getting them to recognise they need to talk and recognise the idea that dialogue itself is a process also. I know I sound like a broken record but what we would like from today is that the DPOs, and the resources for the DPOs, are identified to choose the genuine pathways of engagement with people who are disabled when it comes to looking at climate change.

Mr. Damien Walshe

I wish to amplify Mr. Kearns's message. We are currently at the point where it is almost a double-edged sword. We have massively raised the awareness among statutory bodies at a local and national level of the significance and role of DPOs under the UNCRPD. Without the adequate resourcing, however, we cannot respond to the multiple requests we are being asked to participate in at a local and national level. We recognise that a lot of statutory bodies want to engage with people who are disabled through their authentic disabled persons' organisations, but without the resourcing, it is almost impossible to respond. We are one of the few DPOs that have some funding. It is welcome that we can participate in spaces like that, but many organisations locally and nationally do not have that. We need to think about that long-term resourcing.

This goes back to the point made by Deputy Canney. The Deputy is absolutely right. We cannot have a situation where the State is investing money in systems and structures we here know are potentially putting people in danger, whether it is floating bus stops, shared spaces, or disabled parking bays that are in the line of traffic, and which we believe may result in legal action and which would cost the Exchequer more money to remove them. It would cost more money again to build the systems we as DPOs can tell members now will work. While we have section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act whereby each public body is supposed to develop its public sector duty to assess issues related to equality and human rights, put effective plans in place that will measure those, and report on them annually, there is not a real effective legislative stick. It is more a case of this ought to be done and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC will provide guidance. Ultimately, we are looking at people who are disabled needing to take casework, with the support of IHREC under one of its other powers, against local authorities that are in breach of equal status regulations and are in breach of commitments under the UNCRPD, or we could get to a system now where this committee could show real leadership whereby we move from awareness of it being an issue and see what the legislators can do. The policy needs to be brought up to a level. We do not want to see what is happening now in Dublin being replicated across the State so that, in five years' time, somehow it is the DPOs who are the bad guys when millions of euro will have been spent on infrastructure that does not work and which needs to be changed. Let us not invest in that now. We have limited resources as we try to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Let us put those systems and structures in place. Let us future proof.

As Mr. Kearns has pointed out, let us future proof how we invest in public transport. Dr. Mooney is right that we all have individual responsibility as citizens, nationally and internationally, to try to reduce our reliance on carbon. We as individuals cannot create inclusive public transport systems. That is the responsibility of the State. Deputy Kenny said that in a rural part of the country a person may not have the luxury of asking what bus he or she can get because they do not exist. If we are talking about investing in systems that will allow all of us to participate in society as equals, let us not have buses in east Galway that we have purchased, the NTA says that is okay and is fine, but constituents then say it does not work for them and where do they as disabled people fit into the system. There is a real commitment in saying that, although we have limited resources, let us not go just for the bare minimum but instead go for systems and structures that are actually future proofed and will meet the needs of people who are disabled, now and into the future.

Dr. Robert Mooney

I thank the Deputy for the points. I will just build on the points made already. As I said earlier today, at the core of the national dialogue is the establishment of the social contract on climate action. What this really means, as Mr. Walshe said, is the recognition that there are core responsibilities of the State to provide infrastructure, supports, and accessibility. Only when it is accessible to a broad range of people and especially people with disabilities can we talk about things like behavioural change and people taking up specific line of actions. This is only when they are accessible. That is clearly recognised in the work that we do.

Other points were raised, including transport, the cost of living and so on. Equally, one of the purposes of the climate action plan being a whole-of-government programme and establishing specific acceleration delivery task forces across these areas, including transport, the built environment, and land use is to bring together the right people from across these different Departments to ask what we are doing around climate action, what the key barriers to action are, what we need to do to accelerate and deliver these in a very practical and real sense, and how we measure that. This holds those policies leads and the Ministers accountable to that at that level. Equally, I very much appreciate we must also look at how it is delivered at a local level and how it is measured.

A core part of the local authority climate action plan programme is the recognition that each local authority area has different challenges and different demographics, and that climate action needs to reflect exactly what the nature of the local authority is. Those local authority climate action plans have the capacity to reflect those particular challenges and the national requirements to deliver on our ambitions to become carbon neutral.

As Ms Gilmartin mentioned, we are trying to bring a lot of these core elements together, bringing the right policy leads together to develop key policy initiatives and actions to deliver them and linking the local and national delivery. One of the core reasons the climate action plan is delivered annually is so we can engage actively with a broad range of people across society, identify the barriers for them delivering on climate action, and reflect that in the next iteration of the climate action plan. It is a very fast evolving space but we have the mechanisms to ensure this is not like a five-year plan where we do not come back to it. This is about engaging actively with people every year, listening to understand the challenges, addressing them and iteratively changing the actions we are trying to take.

I thank Dr. Mooney, Ms Gilmartin, Mr. Walshe and Mr. Kearns for their engagement this morning. I also thank our members. With climate action and the changes that are developing within society, there are probably two words that stand out from this morning's discussion: "rights" and not "charity", which is the simple language we can all deal with. While there is an attitude change within society about being inclusive, it is rights versus charity. That is what we need to keep saying.

I thank the members very much for their co-operation this morning, and for their attendance and dedication to the committee. I thank our committee team for all they do for us. Our meeting now stands adjourned.

The joint committee adjourned at 11.38 a.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, 20 April 2023.
Top
Share