Joint Committee on Disability Matters díospóireacht -
Thursday, 20 Apr 2023

A Rights-Based Approach and Disability Legislation: National Disability Authority

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Apologies have been received from the Cathaoirleach, Deputy Moynihan, though he is here for a short part of the meeting. Apologies have also been received from Deputies Dessie Ellis and Jennifer Murnane O'Connor.

The purpose of today's meeting is a discussion about the rights-based approach and disability legislation. I would like to extend, on behalf of the committee, a warm welcome to Dr. Aideen Hartney, director; Dr. Rosalyn Tamming, head of policy, research and public affairs; and Mr. Dharragh Hunt, senior policy adviser, all from the National Disability Authority.

Before we begin, a note on privilege and some housekeeping matters. All those present in the committee room are asked to exercise personal responsibility to protect themselves and others from the risk of contracting Covid-19.

All witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name, or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. In this regard, I ask any member participating via Microsoft Teams that, prior to making their contribution to the meeting, they confirm that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

I now call Dr. Aideen Hartney to make her opening statement.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

The National Disability Authority, NDA, thanks the Chair and the members of the committee for the opportunity to present on the importance of a rights-based approach to disability matters, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD.

The NDA provides independent and evidence-informed advice to Government on policy and practice relevant to the lives of disabled people. We also incorporate a centre for excellence in universal design, promoting the design of physical and digital environments so that they can be accessed, understood and used by everyone, regardless of age, size, ability or disability.

The UNCRPD articulates a series of goals to recognise and realise the rights of disabled people in the various domains of life. The convention does not in itself establish any new rights for disabled people, but rather recognises these individuals as rights holders on an equal basis with all other members of the public.

Ireland is a dualist state, meaning that national legislation is essential in underpinning implementation of the obligations under the convention, and we recognise the work that has been progressed by relevant Departments over recent years in developing and revising legislation to allow for greater alignment with the provisions of the convention. The NDA is aware from its work to support implementation of the national disability inclusion strategy, which expired at the end of 2022, that many disability stakeholders believe some of the barriers to participation they experience could be overcome through robust implementation of existing legislation.

While the convention has placed a greater focus on a rights-based or social model of disability, it is important to note that this has been the direction of travel in the Irish context for almost 20 years, even in advance of ratification. The Disability Act 2005 was specifically designed to advance participation of disabled people in society, both by improving access to mainstream public services, and supporting the provision of specialist services where required. The NDA advises that a review of the legislation would be timely, given the developments within the Irish landscape since its enactment, but that the core principles remain valid, namely, that bodies responsible for providing services to the public should have due regard to how these services are made accessible to all users regardless of ability or disability.

The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth will be leading the development of a UNCRPD implementation strategy over the course of 2023, and this strategy will set out a series of commitments for all Departments to ensure progressive realisation of the goals of the convention. The NDA advises the importance of all Departments working to become more familiar with the UNCRPD and the rights-based approach to disability so that this can underpin the process to agree priority actions under the new strategy.

Such an approach is already provided for under Part 3 of the Disability Act 2005, where sectoral plans were required as a statutory obligation from several of the larger Departments. These plans set out an approach to address key mainstreaming and specialist provision issues for delivery of services to disabled people. The Act also required Departments to co-operate on certain matters as well as providing for Oireachtas oversight.

The NDA advises that while these plans have fallen into abeyance, the development of a UNCRPD implementation strategy offers an opportunity to revisit them. While the configuration of some Departments has changed since the legislation was enacted, the sectors of activity remain similar and continue to be areas where people with disabilities can regularly encounter barriers, including transport, employment, healthcare, social protection, housing and the built environment.

This committee may wish to consider how the relevant sections of the Disability Act could be reviewed and amended to strengthen their purpose, as there is value in Departments outlining clear plans and deliverables to meet their obligations under the UNCRPD. It will also be important, as the strategy is developed, that consideration be given to the interaction of various legislative instruments and to establishing mechanisms to support cross-governmental working.

The Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN Act 2004 and Part 2 of the Disability Act were part of an agreed legislative package to improve outcomes for people with disabilities and were drafted to operate in a joined-up way. The non-commencement of key sections of the EPSEN Act and the challenges to operating Part 2 of the Disability Act have meant joined-up operation of the Acts has not happened, but even so, resource allocation rules in the education sector had a significant impact on demand for assessment of need under Part 2 of the Disability Act. Similarly, the challenges in operating the assessment of need process under the Disability Act impact on the education system, and we know the committee has articulated its concerns on these matters previously.

The current review of the EPSEN Act is taking place in a context very different from that which existed when it was enacted. The UNCRPD and general comment No. 4 require states to progressively realise a more inclusive education model. Domestically, there have been some significant policy and resource allocation reforms, including a significant increase in funding for special education, but also a significant expansion of the numbers of special class places. The NDA has advised that what is required from the current review of the EPSEN Act process is less about commencing the uncommenced sections of the Act or an updating of the legislation. It is about the development of an agreed clear vision of inclusive education for Ireland and how it can be progressively realised. There is now an opportunity to discuss and agree that vision of inclusive education for Ireland. People with disabilities, disabled persons’ organisations and children with special education needs and disabilities are central to developing that vision.

As already mentioned, the disability Act provides both for a mainstream approach to provision of accessible services and supports to the public, and more specialist interventions where relevant and appropriate. The NDA advises there are a number of areas where delivery of such supports would require additional resources, and this should be incorporated in the business planning activities of the relevant Departments. We take this opportunity to highlight a number of areas where this might apply, to address current gaps within the system, and which we would be happy to discuss further. There should be provision of co-ordinated supported employment services to support people with disabilities, who wish to work, into employment, including those with higher support needs. Provision of personal assistant supports should be set at a level that reflects the vision of independent living set out in the UNCRPD. There should be a supply of universally designed housing so that housing stock facilitates independent living for disabled people and older people within our communities. Further development of transport infrastructure is needed to facilitate independent travel and, in turn, full participation in the socioeconomic life of the State.

UNCRPD applies a rights-based definition of disability, where it is the interaction of an impairment with barriers in society that causes a disability. The NDA advises the importance of disability equality training across the public sector to ensure those delivering services and supports are familiar with this model and how distinct it is from a medical model. We recommend that Departments and agencies disability-proof their approach to service provision from the outset to allow consideration of how their policies and practices will impact on disabled people. This should include meaningful consultation with disabled people and their representative organisations. A universal design approach to the design and delivery of public services is also something that can help ensure these services are accessible for everyone from the outset. The NDA has developed a number of guides and toolkits that can support public bodies to achieve this as efficiently as possible, therefore benefitting the total population as well as disabled people.

Ratification of UNCRPD has committed the Irish Government to recognising and realising the rights of disabled people in common with all other rights holders resident in the State. A review of disability legislation would be timely to allow a holistic examination of where there may be barriers to achieving this. However, the primary way of achieving progress under UNCRPD is for public bodies to focus on how the mainstream services and supports they currently deliver can be configured to meet the needs of everyone, and to ensure adequate resourcing of those areas where additional supports might be required. This is already provided for in legislation, and the NDA will continue to provide advice and support to public bodies on how best to meet these obligations.

Chairman

I thank Dr. Hartney. I will invite members to put their questions. When I call members to speak, they should adhere to the agenda items scheduled for discussion.

Senator Erin McGreehan

I welcome the witnesses. I want to start by thanking them for the work they do for disability rights. I will start without preamble as we are all on the same page. I want to get my head around the monitoring role the NDA has, and then move on to how we can impact on the rights-based model we want. Dr. Hartney mentioned public bodies and toolkits. Is there a flow of interaction or is the toolkit online? What interaction does the organisation have with public bodies, different Departments and local authorities? Does the NDA contact them proactively, or do they contact the organisation with a view to disability proofing their policies? There is a capacity gap in terms of how we support our local authorities and public bodies when it comes to the UNCRPD.

We meet a lot of DPOs at this committee. I apologise because I am not familiar with all the research that has been done. Has there been any research into how the State supports DPOs and how they should be funded. Can Dr. Hartney tell the committee if there are any recommendations that can identified from start to finish when it comes to DPOs? We know they are not currently being funded adequately or properly. Following that, what co-ordination does the NDA have with DPOs relating to research and its ongoing work? The UNCRPD implementation strategy is currently ongoing in the Department. What role does the NDA have in that? I hope it is a good role, and that it does not come after the process, but comes before it. On the ratification of the optional protocol, has research been done on the benefits and consequences of implementing that optional protocol? How would that extra layer of accountability benefit the NDA?

That brings me to the NDA's monitoring and supervision role. Does it have also have a role in holding Departments and public services to account? If not, how can its remit benefit from holding our public bodies and Departments to account? We know our Departments do not look to the UNCRPD when they are creating their policies. They do not look at making legislation disability proof. They are not informed by the rights-based model in a substantial proportion of their policies. They leave it to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. They leave it to disabilities. They silo it off. Dr. Hartney highlighted that in her opening statement, because we need a step change in mentality along with the reviews of the legislation.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

I will start and bring in my colleagues as appropriate. We have a number of monitoring functions established in legislation. Some of that is to monitor Part 5 of the disability Act, which is the employment of disabled people in the public sector. We monitor the implementation of the EU web accessibility directive, and we have also done some monitoring on Part 3 of the disability Act, relating to a code of practice on accessible public services and information. That work is done by seeking information from Departments, which declare their compliance as it relates to a number of indicators, or metrics of compliance. That information is then put into the public domain. That relates to one of the Senator's later questions about holding people to account. Departments do not like to feel they have performed poorly in any of those areas. A hard data point can often be quite motivating in driving change and improvement. On the other side, we have a guidance role and are interactive with Departments in that regard. For example, somebody might have had poor performance under Part 5 of the disability Act.

After measuring and declaring that, we would engage with the public body and offer guidance on how it might improve its performance, the areas it might like to consider, the improvements it could make to its recruitment processes, and how to create a workplace environment with equitable, diverse and inclusive attributes so people would feel comfortable sharing their disabled status. The guidance offers a practical approach allowing people to see how they might make improvements.

We very much try to employ both a carrot and stick, and we have found that to be very effective. There are stakeholders who feel we should be more stringent or have more enforcement powers assigned to us. That would be a matter for the Government, but we have found that the dual approach we take has been effective in bringing about incremental change over time.

We will have a quite significant supporting role in the development of the implementation strategy. Within our remit will be the provision of research, advice and an evidence base to inform the thinking of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and all the other Departments that will need to come to the table for the process. Some of that might be about good practice in other jurisdictions, and some might be about key statistics and data that we analyse. We will do a lot to develop a monitoring framework for the strategy because we believe very strongly that it should be developed in tandem with the strategy itself.

It is worth stressing a general point at this stage. Although the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is leading out on this and is the co-ordinating body, it is really important that all Departments accept they have responsibilities under the UNCRPD. It is in this regard that our role of engaging with them through policy advice forums and providing guidance will be very much to the fore.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

On the monitoring issues and the softer advisory side that Dr. Hartney spoke about, we take every opportunity we can to push the obligations Departments have. Many Departments are developing their new statements of strategy. We mention the Web accessibility directive, Departments’ obligations under the Irish Sign Language Act, Part 3 and Part 5, and their potential obligations under the new upcoming European accessibility legislation. Therefore, we take every opportunity.

For both the national disability inclusion strategy, NDIS, and the comprehensive employment strategy, we produce an independent assessment report. It is not quite a matter of the monitoring of the strategy but it does concern highlighting the good things that happen in the year and the weaker things on which the focus would need to be in future years. There are a set of indicators for the national disability inclusion strategy. We examined those at the end of the strategy. Departments and agencies have been approached for comment before we publish. There are 58 unique indicators. The problem is many of them are process indicators – an example might be based on our having set up a working group to do X, Y or Z – but very few are outcome indicators. Of the outcome indicators that exist, data are not available for several.

In developing the monitoring strategy for the new UNCRPD implementation strategy or the new monitoring framework, we really need to focus on the high-level outcome indicators. The process ones are all important but are at a lower level and perhaps should not get the attention they got in the last strategy. We should really focus on the outcome ones.

On the matter of disabled persons' organisations, DPOs, I completely agree it is an evolving area within Ireland. Five years ago in the NDA, we were not really talking about it, but we produced a research paper in the past couple of years examining what other countries have done. We have produced guidance for Departments to highlight the fact they need to be engaging with DPOs. The question they come to us with concerns how they should do it. That is a difficult question to answer because Departments have limited time and resources to do their consultations and engagement. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth set up the Disability Participation and Consultation Network to try to fulfil its obligations under Article 4.3 of the UNCRPD. That has had limited success. The Department actually asked us to review it. We are in the middle of the review and hope to have a report by the end of June. As part of the review, we will have a series of recommendations considering what structure needs to be in place to ensure we are in compliance and what will work within the Irish setting, taking into consideration other structures that exist, such as the disability stakeholders group and the disability advisory committee within the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. One wants everything to work together to lead to an improvement, not to have overlap that is not necessary.

DPOs themselves have called for a register and a way of defining a DPO. Nobody has taken on that role. It is not for us to say; DPOs self-declare. Other countries have checklists based on what is laid out within general comment No. 7 of the UNCRPD, which states the relevant organisations must comprise mostly people with a disability and be led by people with a disability. There are other factors, however, including national, local and regional considerations. Therefore, there is a lot of work to be done in this area. The funding, which has been mentioned, represents a gap. Some DPOs are established for quite a long time and have good governance systems that enable them to apply for funding, whereas others are very small and run on shoestring budgets. It is very difficult for the latter to engage, so there has to be parity.

We developed last year a toolkit and guidance on participation and consultation with people with disabilities. It examines some of these issues.

Mr. Dharragh Hunt

We are evaluating the Disability Participation and Consultation Network. The issue of funding has certainly come up in the engagement we have had with DPOs. I am sure that will be a strong feature in the final report, which is due in the middle of the year.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

In June or July.

Mr. Dharragh Hunt

That issue and the challenges it poses will come up in the report.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

It is a matter of ascertaining how the recommendations in the report can be incorporated into a UNCRPD implementation plan so that, over the next couple of years, a stronger support structure will be put in place for DPOs.

Senator Erin McGreehan

Reference was made to the interaction between local authorities and Departments. Is there proactive interaction between local authorities and other public bodies or do local authorities have to come to the NDA? Do they come to it? Is the engagement proactive? Is it about someone in a local authority who is very much conscious of positive change going to the NDA for assistance? Does the NDA have a role in actively supporting local authorities? They comprise a huge part of our implementation of the UNCRPD.

Dr. Hartney mentioned incremental change within the Departments. Does she have any examples of incremental changes made within Departments based on NDA recommendations? Under the Act under which the NDA is formed, is there power to have a league table on which Departments are listening to it most or implementing the recommendations? We know recommendations and guidelines are just recommendations and guidelines, but if there is a best girl in the class, why not highlight that? Can that be done? We want to highlight best practice and the Departments that are adhering to the NDA’s recommendations because it would mean more carrot.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

The engagement with local authorities is quite variable. There are 31 of them, so there is a fair bit of variation. Sometimes somebody proactive within a local authority will approach us. It is absolutely within our remit to give advice and guidance to local authorities. We very much recognise that they are at the front line. When local area development plans are in development, we make submissions on what we feel should be picked up on. In some cases, local authorities have been very proactive in that regard.

A good example of that is a walkability audit we tested in County Clare. By having the audit tool and the result that came out of that in the town of Kilrush, the county council there apparently made funding available to address some of the issues identified during that audit. People with disabilities participated, as did those using buggies and older people, in finding out just how walkable the town in question was and huge improvements have been made as a result. That is an example of where the mix of our guidance and toolkits comes into a local area where there is a degree of proactivity.

One of the things we said during our time to assess progress under the NDIS was that local authorities were not represented at that steering group table to the necessary extent. That was something the chair of that group, Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, was very keen to address but, unfortunately, the strategy expired before we had a chance to do so. A couple of actions within that strategy designated local authorities as the responsible bodies for delivery. Those were areas where we did not get as much update as would have been liked. Certainly, an area for attention in the development of a new strategy is how local actors integrate with national actors and everybody is on the same page. That is a little bit about the picture.

On identifying improvements, one example is in our annual report on Part 5 of the Disability Act. We include examples of good practice where somebody took our advice in the past and how it has represented a change in their numbers year on year. Indeed, comparative figures can be looked at for each year because that is an annual report. That is quite interesting. By and large, Departments are in compliance with that part of the Act. The challenges are with public bodies at agency level. For some of them, it can be more challenging. I will give another example we had. When we published our first report on the web accessibility directive, which is a directive from Europe, it showed poor performance in certain sectors. For example, some local authorities, to go back to that, were not doing as well as they should. By presenting those results and, again, engaging and presenting guidance on how to improve, when we came to do the 2022 report catch-up, we saw huge differences. Some of them had really raised their game, including, I think, Mayo County Council, which stands out in my mind. The reports are in the public domain on our website so that can be checked out. There was a little competition between local authorities in that they were all trying to improve.

Senator Erin McGreehan

That is what we want.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

Similarly, in the higher education sector, universities really invested effort in making some improvement. That is where we see our monitoring work motivating people to try to improve over time.

I will go back to one of the Senator's earlier questions about the optional protocol. We have not done any specific research on the benefits of it. However, there is huge appetite for ratification of the optional protocol. The UNCRPD implementation strategy would be a good opportunity to see what process might underpin that. It provides for an appeal or cases to be taken when all national avenues have been exhausted. One of the things we know from recent conversations we had with the Ombudsman's office is that not as many cases as it expected were taken in respect of the Disability Act. A little awareness raising about national avenues might be done, while awaiting ratification of the optional protocol.

Senator Erin McGreehan

Is such an awareness programme within the NDA's remit?

Dr. Aideen Hartney

It would probably be within the remit of the various appeals mechanisms, such as the Ombudsman's office, but we would certainly offer advice and guidance if asked.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

I thank the representatives for their opening statement and responses. A chap is interning with me at present who is sight impaired. Eoin does my preparation with me for these meetings every week. I am always interested to hear what his view is, what he anticipates and what he would like to say. I will lead off on that and then go to my own questions. When Eoin came to intern in Leinster House, he had to do a walk-through with staff. He has an assistance dog so we had to cater for where the dog goes to the toilet and very practical things like that. I was incredibly impressed with the fact he had a bag containing a bottle of water and a collapsible bowl so Quest is well-catered for in our office, but these were things people did not think about. We did as much preparation as we could to make sure Eoin was set up in every way but he relied on using his own computer. We have to email things to him so his own software assists him in carrying out his role.

Eoin is going for another work experience opportunity in the next couple of weeks. In that context, that employer has put in handrails and has had to anticipate. He knows that employer is doing that at their own expense but the reimbursement process is a very long one and he wonders about the bar on that for small businesses. Does it become a deterrent, even if there is willingness to engage? Eoin's insights for our office are extraordinary, challenging and very good in shaking up our thinking and terminology. We have somebody on whom to sound off in respect of language and inclusivity. It is a valuable learning experience for me and those working with us. However, if a small business is inclined to be as inclusive as it can possibly be, there are then costs. That mechanism seems to be arduous and ridiculous. Is that a major impediment? Those are Eoin's questions. I will come back to the comments I would like to make.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

I thank the Senator. It is great to hear such good examples of employers, such as the Houses of the Oireachtas, taking proactive approaches to employing somebody with a disability.

There are a few ways of looking at this. We advise that where a public building or place of employment is being built from scratch, a universal design approach from the outset would include all of those considerations the Senator mentioned, such as good accessibility, level access, good signage, good way-finding that incorporates way-finding for people with vision impairments, and all those kind of things. We have an abundance of guidance on that. That is easy enough to think about if somebody is building a building and starting the process now. Where it can become more complicated is in retrofitting existing buildings. Many public sector buildings are in protected structures or older buildings. There are additional challenges in that regard but, equally, there is additional guidance. We are currently developing a code of practice for accessible public buildings to help guide public bodies on how they meet their obligations under Part 3 of the Disability Act. It is hoped that will be with the Minister by the end of this year for approval. That will offer some very practical guidance in some areas and examples of good practice that public bodies could take on board. Again, we will be able to monitor compliance with that code of practice. It will be another way of driving progress.

The assistive technology the Senator mentioned is an area of challenge. It links to the other areas she talked about as regards reasonable accommodation supports for employers. It is certainly a long process. We have heard through work we did on employment that it is a source of frustration and can be a barrier to employing somebody with a disability. The Department of Social Protection undertook a review of reasonable accommodation funding. We understand it has assigned a budget to implement the recommendations of that review. We look forward to seeing that and advising on some of those areas for consideration.

In terms of advice and guidance to employers, a service called Employers for Change offers information and advice to employers from a business perspective. Employers have found it very valuable because it speaks to them in their language in the context of their imperatives and priorities. It is a valuable service showing what can be put in place to enable the recruitment and retention of somebody with a disability. Given that that type of service is very much welcomed and used by employers, putting something like that on a sustainable, long-term footing would be a good move.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

To add to what Dr. Hartney said, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, in tandem with the review of the reasonable accommodation fund carried out by the Department of Social Protection, is developing a code of practice on reasonable accommodation in order that employers will know if they are in compliance with that code. It is also developing guidance for employers on reasonable accommodation and has asked us to have a look at the guidance when it is ready. They are positive developments. As Dr. Hartney said, we welcome the review by the Department of Social Protection. We hope it will be published soon in order that we can see what it is proposing for a new scheme fund. Submissions made by us and others focused on those areas relating to the long period for reimbursement and to the fact some of the provisions made were a little archaic and needed to be updated with respect to the modern assistive technology and so on that exists. In the case of the young man who works with Senator Seery Kearney, she said he came with his own computer, but if she had provided one for him, he would not have the right to take that to the next employer with him, whereas it would seem to make sense for him to be allowed to do that.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

That is a really good point. We want employers to be tech-ready as well, but I agree.

I am a barrister who practises in employment law, so I am very familiar with the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. In changes that have come about in the amalgamation under the Workplace Relations Commission, it holds the remit for the refusal of services to persons with a disability and the right of reasonable accommodation within the workplace, whether an employee or someone trying to access a service who is discriminated against, and that seems to be where there is teeth in all this. The problem is that by the time a case comes to the WRC, the damage has been done and the discrimination has been experienced. Going back to Senator McGreehan's point about proactivity and obliging compliance and forward and inclusive thinking, where are the teeth on that? If there are no teeth, should we ask for them? I am mindful of the St. John Ambulance experience with Tusla, where suddenly we realised Tusla did not have the teeth we had thought it did. Is there something with teeth for which we should be advocating and ensuring a legislative process? In tandem with that, my personal belief is that the Disability Act, and section 2 in particular, needs to be reviewed and updated. Certainly, it needs to give people access not just to assessment but to services as well. That is a separate framework, but is there more we could do in that context?

Dr. Aideen Hartney

A lot of what Senator Seery Kearney is talking about relates to attitudes and willingness to accept and recognise disabled people as rights holders, and to getting that message out across public bodies. We carried out research in 2019 on cases taken to the WRC in respect of reasonable accommodations and found that where employers had been found against, it was often because they had not gone through a due process of thinking about a reasonable accommodation or discussing it with the person. The reasonable accommodation process is very much envisaged as a partnership process between the employee and the employer, and that attitude could be more pervasive.

There is probably a range of possible mechanisms, relating to monitoring, showing good practice or having the availability of guidance and additional funding for supports where required, and the enforcement mechanisms would necessarily come at the end. If we could get to a stage where the attitudes were positive and that kind of bias and prejudice we sometimes see could be addressed at an earlier stage, we might not get to the stage of needing enforcement-----

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

I apologise for cutting across Dr. Hartney but the Central Statistics Office reports of this week show that people know how to give the politically correct answer when surveyed on their attitudes to disability, but when done anonymously, there is a great disparity in regard to actual inclusive thinking. This goes back to the point about the plastic bag tax. Sometimes it is not until people have to pay for something or until there is a proactive, clear deterrent that there will be a paradigm shift.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

Yes, the report we launched with the ESRI yesterday discussed that disparity. It shows where those areas of focus need to be. If there are data to underpin the areas that are offering a socially desirable response, we can target our efforts and resources on that. We have the legislative instruments in the Disability Act to do what is required in respect of public bodies. While we, like the Senator, feel as though it is probably timely for that legislation to be updated, the provisions and the principles are there and people are required to be compliant. My colleagues might wish to comment on this.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

One question that rears its head every now and again concerns the fact that although there are targets for public sector employment of people with disabilities, there are not targets for the private sector. There is always a bit of a debate and it dies down again. It certainly would not be popular with private sector employers. It would be difficult to monitor and could be seen as tokenism. In surveys and discussions with employers, if they are asked how many people with a disability work with them or how many who applied for jobs did not get them, the answer will often be that nobody who had a disability applied or that nobody who works in the company has a disability. There is so much hidden disability that it is likely there are people with disabilities who do not share that information. Even within the public sector, there can be a reluctance of people to share it, even though data are collected anonymously. If they share the fact they have a disability within their work, there is a perception they would be looked on unfavourably. It is an issue when people are applying for a job, whatever about when they have got into the job, if, when they are applying, they are seen to be somebody who is going to cost money or be more difficult to manage. There are some negative perceptions that need to be worked on with employers. As the Senator noted, when a case gets to the WRC, it is too late. It all needs to happen beforehand.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

Yes, generally, the relationship will have broken down. I have been on both sides of the table, defending employers as well as taking cases on behalf of employees. Sometimes that engagement is facilitated by employers and they hit the intransigence of only one answer and cannot meet that. To be fair, many well-intentioned employers fall foul of the legislation not through their own willingness to do so. There are some really good employers against which rulings may be made.

Mr. Dharragh Hunt

Both Senators raised the issue of accountability and Dr. Hartney touched in her opening address on the issue of sectoral plans and the fact they have fallen into abeyance. They are provided for in the Act. It provided for accountability to the Oireachtas, which gave it teeth. Sections 31 to 37, inclusive, provided for key Departments to produce sectoral plans that had statutory obligations.

There was a statutory obligation to co-operate with other Departments to engage with people with disabilities and lay those sectoral plans before the Houses of the Oireachtas for discussion and approval. There is an accountability mechanism there in which the committee would have a role but it has fallen into abeyance. The original sectoral plans were produced but there was a lack of clarity in the legislation with regard to whether the plans had to be reviewed and new plans produced. They fell into abeyance and no subsequent round of sectoral plans has been produced. That was a mechanism for accountability providing for within the legislation but it is now underused.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

If the Cathaoirleach will indulge me, I have a brief question relating to that point. With the reasonable accommodation fund, disability benefits and invalidity pensions, when the Minister of State with responsibly for disabilities came into the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the budget that came with her outnumbered the rest of the budget for that Department by an enormous amount. There are other Departments involved in this area, however, such as the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. There are interdepartmental groups and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is impressive in how she chairs that and how it is working. However, disability is still the responsibility of a Minister of State rather than a Minister with a full seat at Cabinet. Given the number of people with impairments of all sorts, whether acquired or from birth, there are in society, perhaps a Minister with a full seat at Cabinet should have responsibility for disability or there should be a unit within the Department of the Taoiseach to which everything is accountable. There should be a higher level of accountability within government to ensure the desire and intention of the State is shown at Cabinet and in the governance of the country. Looking forward, are we failing children and families, especially in the context of early intervention and other areas, because there is not that authority of a full Cabinet seat? That Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities is not even represented at budget negotiations but, rather, has to rely on the Minister for Health in that regard, or on the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, perhaps. I am not sure how that will all work in the context of negotiating budgets. Do the witnesses have any thoughts in that regard?

Dr. Aideen Hartney

It is a challenging issue. The senior Minister at the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, is very invested and committed to-----

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

I do not doubt that. There is no inference except that he has a very heavy workload.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

He has a huge brief but that level of investment means that it is represented at the Cabinet table. As Mr. Hunt stated, if something like the sectoral plan idea could be incorporated in a UNCRPD implementation strategy, that would provide a driving mechanism for other Departments. One of our concerns is that if there were a Ministry for disability or it became a specific thing, other Departments might be of the view that it is all taken care of in that ministry and the matter would become even more siloed rather than less so. Although it may be timely to update the Disability Act, it was important in its time in providing that kind of legislative underpinning for a mainstreaming approach. As the Senator rightly stated, disability applies across the life course. When the census figures come out later this year, they will probably indicate that upwards of 15% of the population declared they have a disability to some extent. That is significant. It means that every domain of the public with which a Department deals on the areas within its remit would have application to people with disabilities. It is those underpinning mechanisms with regard to disability proofing all policies and interventions at the outset, ensuring there is co-operation and compiling detailed plans at the level of each sector that are important because not only will it be all of those Departments setting out their areas of commitment and their recognition of the rights of people with disabilities, it will also provides a much more straightforward and transparent monitoring mechanism to determine whether they have delivered on those commitments. There are other mechanisms that can be utilised. In the past, Cabinet committees on social inclusion looked at this area. That may be something to reconsider. I am cautioning that the designation of a particular Minister or Department does not necessarily resolve all the difficulties because the issue spans across so much.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

That is very wise. I thank Dr. Hartney.

Senator Erin McGreehan

I wish to return to the issue of accountability in the context of the public sector and the various bodies that are in place. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, has a role in this area. It has a public sector duty under section 42 of the Act. Disability is a significant area in that regard. Does the NDA have a role in supporting IHREC in the context of showing the public sector duty in respect of disabilities is not adhered to in many of these organisations? IHREC has the power, although it does not use it, to bring local authorities, public sectors, Departments to task through the courts in respect of their public sector duty. Has the NDA ever had a role in that regard? How can its research and clear evaluation of many policies within each Department work to support that? There is no greater stick than a court case the IHREC is a body with legal enforcement strategies or responsibilities. How do the witnesses see those -----

Dr. Aideen Hartney

IHREC is working hard on processes to gather more information and provide more meaningful guidance on how the public sector duty is applied. To date, we have not had a role in this context. Something like that could be an indicator within a monitoring framework for the new UNCRPD implementation strategy to the extent to which disability is referred in the public sector duty plans that all public bodies are required to prepare. That would be something we could potentially feed back to IHREC, but it has the monitoring duty for the application of section 42. Dr. Tamming has done significant work on this.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act, which will be commenced next week, contains provision for the NDA to the IHREC with data and statistics for it to perform its UNCRPD monitoring role. It is the official monitoring body for the State in that regard. We have a role there. We engage regularly with IHREC on various issues, share reports and meet. It is an area we can explore further. Once the legislation is commenced, we will probably speak to IHREC with regard to developing a memorandum of understanding for this other piece of work relating to UNCRPD reporting and can look at how we can support one another. We can give it information to-----

Senator Erin McGreehan

It has done so much work in the area. I thank the witnesses.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

My apologies but I have to leave to attend a meeting of the housing committee. I thank the witnesses and will engage with them on other matters.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Deputy Higgins is joining the meeting remotely. Is the Deputy within the precincts of Leinster House?

Deputy Emer Higgins

I am.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I invite the Deputy to ask her questions.

Deputy Emer Higgins

Super.

Can you hear me okay, despite the bells?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I can hear you perfectly.

Deputy Emer Higgins

Apologies for not being present in the room. I am going to the same meeting of the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage as Senator Seery Kearney and thought it easier to join and listen in only for the first hour.

I thank Dr. Hartney for her comments, in particular the need for a direct Ministry, which is not to overshadow in any way the fact we need this to be totally cross-departmental, that we need policies right across every Department to be disability proofed, and that it has to shine. That is core and central to the message Dr. Hartney has given us. As legislators and as political representatives of various parties and none, it is our job to make sure our political parties take that message on board. The disability-proofing of policies is a prime example of something that could be done in this area. Are there any other practical suggestions Dr. Hartney could give to us that we could take back to the various Departments we work with? For example, are there high-level strategy groups Dr. Hartney feels are lacking or is there anything from a practical perspective that would make that interdepartmental and cross-departmental communication on this issue more effective?

Dr. Aideen Hartney

I thank the Deputy. That area of cross-departmental collaboration has been one that has been very challenging. A long number of years ago, there was a senior officials group between Departments where officials at the level of assistant secretary and up would meet to discuss some of the cross-cutting issues where challenges had arisen. That is something that was practical and beneficial and has kind of fallen into abeyance in recent years. All of these considerations would be important in terms of the development of the new UNCRPD implementation strategy. There will be what are the priority actions to commit to under that strategy but it will also be what a case of what ongoing monitoring, reporting and implementation look like. It is important that all these discussions are done in partnership with disabled people and their representative organisations because they will have a sense as well of the levers for change at departmental level. There is much to consider in that regard in the development of a new strategy, but something formal whereby different Departments engage on key issues where solutions need to be found would be helpful. I do not know if anyone wants to add to that.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Has the Deputy any other questions?

Deputy Emer Higgins

Apologies, I thought there was somebody in the room adding. Once we have the UNCRPD action plan around giving weighted prioritisation to the different action points and proposals within it, would a steering group with representatives from other Departments in addition to representatives from the disability organisations work and be effective?

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

In the national disability inclusion strategy, it did not really work. There were Departments and the disability stakeholders group, which was people with disabilities and some bigger disability organisations. There could be in excess of 70 people at a meeting, which made monitoring quite difficult. There was time for updates but not for probing and questioning. A different approach needs to be used. Everybody's input is still needed but it needs to be done in a different way. A smaller group at the top is needed, perhaps with the Minister, and then other groups feeding into it. When the strategy is developed, it is likely to have a number of priority pillars. Without pre-empting what it will be, let us say there would be an employment pillar and education pillar, with a group around each of those pillars reporting to the group rather than everybody, all those 70 people or so, doing so because that did not work that effectively.

Deputy Emer Higgins

I hear what Dr. Tamming is saying. That could be almost like a steering group of the Minister and the top officials and top representatives and almost a workstream underneath for each pillar identified in the programme. The workstream would report monthly and the steering group would meet quarterly. Would something like that capture it a little better?

Dr. Aideen Hartney

It is certainly an option that could work. Something important for any steering group convened is that the officials who are assigned to sit on it are at the decision-making level within Departments because that was a challenge under the previous strategy, where people had to take back concerns to their Department and see what could be done then. It would be important that a steering group, such as the Deputy is talking about, looks at the high-level issues and is given the space and time to focus on the intractable questions rather than some of the granular stuff that could be dealt with through either a workstream issue or at departmental level.

Deputy Emer Higgins

I thank Dr. Hartney. We talk so much about the lived experience in this committee, it is quite a change of focus for us to talk about the processes, strategies and steering groups behind the policies and policy changes that will make a huge difference to people lives. I appreciate Dr. Hartney indulging me on that. That is good learning and good feedback for all of us to take back to our parties and to the Minister.

Senator Tom Clonan

I apologise that I had to leave this morning. I had to go to a crisis meeting. I really wanted to hear what National Disability Authority had to say today and I am at a disadvantage in that I did not hear what it spoke to today.

I very much appreciate the National Disability Authority coming in here and the work that it does. Deputy Higgins mentioned the lived experience. I have come into this space by way of lived experience. Something we would definitely have observed, particularly since the financial crash, is that the situation for people such as our son, who is now an adult, is deteriorating on every measure, qualitatively and quantitatively. That is obviously a huge concern for us as parents. The narrative in Ireland always puzzles me. I have said this here previously in committee. As institutions, organisations and individuals, we know that discrimination on the basis of ethnicity is not tolerated, and quite rightly so, and people call it out all the time. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or religious orientation - all of those - are clearly signalled but when it comes to disability, it is puzzling, frustrating and heartbreaking to note how routine it is to discriminate against persons with disabilities. I refer to casual cruel discrimination, often for idiosyncratic reasons. That is what our lived experience is telling us in all sorts of ways. We have addressed many of those issues in committee.

I detect a change in that narrative. When I ran for election in 2016, I did it as a protest. Many people said to me that I needed to broaden out my platform because not many people can relate to the issue of disability as it is a niche issue, a minority issue or a medical issue. I would say six years later that was absolutely not the case. The narrative is changing. It is going in the right direction. I think it is because of the work that people such as Dr. Hartney are doing in emphasising the fundamental human rights basis of the concerns that confront the community.

I would like to reach out to Dr. Hartney and maybe meet her because I have some ideas, in the limited that I can as a Senator, to introduce a Private Members' Bill or whatever. I might, if Dr. Hartney, had time, reach out to her, maybe meet up with her at her convenience, bounce my ideas off her and get some advice from her.

Dr. Hartney will have to forgive me if, because I was not here, I am asking something she has already addressed. On the apparent reluctance to ratify the optional protocol fully, has Dr. Hartney a sense as to what the resistance to that might be? Is it financial concerns? Is it concerns around litigation or what is it? Is Dr. Hartney optimistic about that?

I would say, from our lived experience, that things are deteriorating but, in the witnesses' experience with the NDA, do they detect an improvement or a change in the narrative? Do they think things are improving or is there something over the horizon? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? I suppose that is what I am trying to ask.

Again, I apologise that I had to leave.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

Not at all. I thank the Senator for his questions.

As regards the optional protocol, my understanding is that the approach is the same as that the Government took to ratification of the convention itself, that is, Ireland has a long-standing policy of trying to have its legislative ducks in a row before it ratifies an international treaty. The main effort, I think, was to get issues such as these as regards decision-making legislation across the line before ratifying the optional protocol. A previous commitment had been that the Government would ratify post Ireland's first reporting cycle. I understand there is a willingness to look at that with a slightly earlier timeframe now. That is the main thing. One of the things we said earlier was that there is a huge appetite out there for the ratification of the optional protocol, and rightly so, but that it provides for avenues of appeal where all national levels of appeal have been exhausted. There is probably still some work to be done to ensure that those national avenues of access are accessible to everybody and that everybody is aware of them because perhaps more could be done at national level before it would need to go to the level of invoking the optional protocol.

In response to the Senator's broader question, do we detect an improvement, I am a historian by background so I always tend to see the glass as half full as to what has been achieved, particularly over the 20 years the NDA has been in existence. When one looks at it over that timeframe, some of the mechanisms and apparatuses within society that were not there at the time the NDA was founded have since been introduced, and moves are being made in the right direction. I think the arc of history is moving towards the positive but we would all probably agree that progress has not been as fast as anyone would like, and there have been instances of two steps forward, one back. There is certainly lots more to be done, but I do think Ireland is moving in the right direction. Certainly, as the Senator himself said, some of the narrative is very steadily moving away from the old charitable model and people with disabilities as recipients of care. While it is not at the level it should be yet, there is a growing recognition of people as rights holders in common with everybody else in society.

As for the routine discrimination the Senator spoke about, I do not know if Dr. Tamming or Mr. Hunt want to say anything about the report we launched yesterday or what it shows.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

Senator Clonan may have seen that we launched a report with the ESRI yesterday. Historically, since 2001, we did a national attitudes to disability survey and have repeated it every five years up to 2017. It had shown generally that attitudes were fairly good but we know that the lived experience of people with disabilities was that maybe attitudes were not so good. We therefore questioned whether the mechanism by which we were collecting data was really giving a true picture of attitudes. Obviously, attitudes lead to discrimination. We therefore asked the ESRI to look at the approach we were using and the institute used an experimental approach to try to gauge whether people were hiding their true opinions. That can be done in a certain way the questions are asked. We found that when anonymity was given to people in answering a question, they showed more discrimination than when they had to be more open about their views. The difference was not huge, and the message overall from the report was that there are still, in general, high levels of positivity, particularly towards policy areas that might improve the lives of people with disabilities. Then again, support was seen to drop, as was said, when it was stated that it may cost more in taxes or that resources would have to be taken from elsewhere. It was a very interesting study. It highlights the importance of measuring attitudes but also puts the caveats around how they are measured in that maybe they are not showing a true picture, so it has to be looked at in a lot of different ways.

The Central Statistics Office, CSO, does periodic surveys on discrimination in general, on all equality grounds. The last one, I think, was in 2019, and people with disabilities definitely experienced quite a lot of discrimination. We would like to see that improve over time. One of the things the report yesterday and lots of other literature have shown is the contact theory. People who know somebody with a disability, particularly if they know them well, have much more positive attitudes than people who do not know anyone with a disability. Then you move that on and wonder who the people who do not know someone with a disability are, because they make up 13% of the population currently. The proportion will probably be higher when we get the census findings next month. We need to make sure that people with disabilities are more visible in society in order that they are not living in segregated settings, they are not going to school in a segregated way and they have access to employment. It all leads up then to better attitudes and reduced discrimination, in theory.

Senator Tom Clonan

It is great to hear that. I take the example of my son. He went to a mainstream school. He is now in third level and with a group or cohort of people who will be very familiar with a wheelchair and will not be afraid to ask how this works or what that is for. Before I got elected, my only experience of disability was our own family's journey. My son has a rare disease so we were never members of any collective group. Having come into this space, having been elected and having met organisations such as the witnesses', I am learning so much about the broader community. The stakeholder group was mentioned. I was a participant in the stakeholder group. It was just at the end of Covid and I remember seeing a screen with 60 to 70 people on it. One of the things about our community that strikes me is that it is very fragmented and divided and the politics is such that there seem to be many competing interests where there need not be. I always think that if we had, as a community, the cohesion the LGBTQI community has or the movement that was mobilised to repeal the eighth amendment had, it could be such a powerful lobby. Dr. Tamming asked who the people who do not know somebody with a disability are. We are all going to have a disability. We all acquire injuries, whether psychological or physical. Our cohort is expected to live until we are 100 years old, and we would like to live with some dignity in our homes, and for the State that is a no-brainer because it is far cheaper. The things we are looking for as a community, those little supports and scaffolding such as occupational therapists, OTs, physiotherapists and personal assistants, will benefit the whole of society. When we talk about those things in the language of fundamental human rights in the way that the LGBTQI community has done and in the way the repeal the eighth movement did, that is hopefully the way to bring about the improvements that are needed.

Again, I apologise that I had to leave. I thank the witnesses for the work they are doing. I will be in contact with them. I hope I can meet them at some point at their convenience to get some advice on some of the things I have in mind. I thank them again.

Senator Fiona O'Loughlin

My sincere apologies that I missed the earlier part of the meeting to other parliamentary duties but I have had the opportunity to read quickly through the witnesses' submissions, for which I thank them. I thank also the secretariat here for their excellent briefing on the roadmap as to where we are and where we need to go.

I was going to confine my questions to three of the different articles of the convention. As for Article 19, on living independently and being included in the community, one of the key areas here is that support services such as personal assistants should be made available for disabled people in order that they can live independently and be integrated and included in wider society.

Unfortunately, as we know, Ireland is failing in its obligation to support independent living. In 2017, the average time per day for personal assistance for people with disabilities was just 42 minutes, which falls very far short of what is desirable. The committee has recommended that a national personal assistance service be developed.

What legislative measures would be needed to implement this? The committee has also recommended that a right to independent living be implemented so that people who need it a could access independent living and necessary supports. I would like the witnesses' views on those points and then I can go on to Article 24 on education and Article 27 on work and employment.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

I think representatives from the ESRI were in here recently. We commissioned that study in the same way as the study we released with the ESRI yesterday. We have a research partnership with the ESRI that is part of a large research programme. We recognised that personal assistance was quite an under-researched area in Ireland. As the committee knows, the findings showed that the system itself is very fragmented and there are differences between the various community healthcare organisations, CHOs. The legislative underpinning is a little bit difficult and I will let Mr. Hunt talk a bit more about this. Part 2 of the Disability Act 2005 says people have access to an assessment of need, but it does not have the service bit in there. If the requirement for access to a service is put clearly into legislation, we could end up in the same position where it is dependent on available resources. It does not necessarily move things on. I am not 100% sure legislation is necessary. Perhaps a policy commitment would do the same job but other people might have differing views on that.

On access to independent living, the HSE has a working group on nursing homes that Mr. Hunt is a part of so I will let him talk about that.

Mr. Dharragh Hunt

I will go back to the point Dr. Tamming made in relation to Part 2 of the Act. It is clear that Part 2 has not worked, at least not for children. I do not think anybody would argue this point. We need to look at how it was designed and how it might work for adults, or how it might work in the future, or if it had been rolled out for adults first. The idea was that a person got an assessment. If that person needed a personal assistant, PA, it would not have been about trying to establish a diagnosis or not. Rather, it would have looked at the person's needs. Then the person would receive a service statement which might not have established entitlement to everything that was in the person's assessment of needs, but would identify the provision the person was going to get and he or she would have a right to that. Then the idea was that a section 13 report was supposed to be produced that would be an aggregate report setting out the shortfall in PA hours across the State. Then organisations like ours and the political system would be very clear on the issue. For example, the data might say that we were down a million PA hours. It then would become a political decision as to whether it would be funded this year or whether the resources would be deployed somewhere else. However, none of that took off, so we do not have the information As Dr. Tamming said, the resources we procured through the ESRI showed that in different areas and different disciplines, there were different approaches to assessments and different definitions of what a PA is. Some places used home support hours as personal assistance hours. There is a lack of clarity as to what is going on.

To return to the Senator's question, the legislation we have is imperfect but a version of it probably could go some way, if there was a standard approach to assessment and identifying the gap that exists. We would then have a process for planning for the future and addressing the shortfall. That was the thinking. It was rolled out for children first and it became this thing about trying to establish a diagnosis. There have been all kinds of issues but possibly there is something in the existing legislation which, with some updating and tweaking, could make it perform the function to which the Senator referred.

Senator Fiona O'Loughlin

I will move on to Article 24 and the right to education in inclusive and accessible environments on an equal basis with others to help empower people with disabilities and ensure that they can be educated to the fullest of their own ability and potential. In the past the committee has raised concerns about the EPSEN Act and how it needs to be updated. What are the witnesses' views on the Act and how could it be updated?

Mr. Dharragh Hunt

The last few comments have been made in relation to attitudes, discrimination and education. As UNCRPD general comment No. 4 states that inclusive education is the key driver, we have to create an inclusive society so those two things are very linked.

The EPSEN Act is being reviewed at the moment. In our view, the legislation needs to be looked at but something more fundamental than just commencing the sections of the Act that are uncommenced and tweaking and updating the legislation is needed. We are now at a point where what is missing is a vision for inclusive education. We need to clarify what we need for children and young people with disabilities and special education needs. Over the last number of years, there have been a some positive developments and there has been a huge increase in investment in special education. There have been efforts to try to resource schools through the front-loading models and the reconfiguration of the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, regional teams and all of that. However, in parallel, we have had a huge increase in the number of children going to special classes. At present it is a bit unclear what the vision is for inclusive education. Work needs to be done to clarify this and establish what we want. I think that is what is required by Article 24. It is about progressive realisations. General comment No. 4 essentially is saying that states need to buy into the vision of inclusive education and there needs to be a plan. Everyone accepts that we are not going to have a fully inclusive education system next week or in a year's time, but it is about having a long-term plan for how we can move towards a more inclusive education system.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

Part 2 of the Disability Act 2005 is very linked to parts of the EPSEN Act. We and others had called for them to be reviewed in tandem. This might still be a possibility but any changes in the EPSEN Act will have an impact on Part 2 and vice versa. They were designed at the time to be strongly linked and perhaps the issue still exists.

Senator Fiona O'Loughlin

Yes, I agree. Dr. Tamming has correctly pointed out that a lot of investment has gone into special education, but there is no point in talking about it in monetary terms if we do not have the outcomes. We need to have the vision but we also need to be able to measure the outcomes and have better outcomes than just talk about the money that goes into it.

Article 27, on work and employment, refers to people with disabilities having the right to work in an environment that is open, inclusive, supportive, accessible and obviously free from discrimination. Disabled Peoples International, DPI, highlights that 37% of working-age people with disabilities would work if the circumstances were right and obviously, the circumstances are not right. The European Commission country report on employment, social affairs and inclusion still reflects Ireland as a laggard with regard to people with disabilities having a higher than average unemployment rate.

What is needed to increase employment rates? What is the cost benefit for unemployed disabled people to take on work considering the possible loss of disability allowance, medical card and other measures?

I am sure the witnesses are familiar with the OWL programme here Leinster House, which I was really pleased to initiate, having had some involvement with KARE before. It is involved in the programme, along with WALK.

Obviously, it is only a small cohort of people but it has been incredibly successful in getting full-time employment for people with disabilities. Is there any way the NDA feels that could be rolled out among State organisations in particular? Some of the work placements afterwards have been in Leinster House, but some have not. It is opening other employers to the value having disabled people can bring, but also the talents they can bring to the workplace.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

The area of employment is hugely wide-ranging because the circumstances that prepare somebody for employment start way back when expectations are raised as child and children are asked "What are you going to do when you grow up?". That was the thinking behind the comprehensive employment strategy, in that it would span the life course and would be a whole-of-government approach to improving employment outcomes for disabled people. While not wanting to presuppose what might go into a UNCRPD implementation strategy, it is highly likely there will be a focus on employment in that strategy and that will be important in pulling some of those levers. Some of the things we have found through our work that would be needed to improve employment outcomes is there is often good practice at local level or in particular regions or services, but there is not a coherent national approach to this. That is something it would be important to work towards. Consider, for example, the area of supported employment and initiatives like WALK and many others around the country where supported employment and job coaching has shown benefits and been shown to work. There is a policy about approaching that agreed between a number of Departments since 2018, but again it has not proved possible to implement that approach. That would be one of the supports that would be helpful in improving those outcomes. Also, over 70% of people who have a disability will have acquired it while of working age and many people will have exposure to employment, so it is important to keep those links with employment going even after acquiring a disability. Again, that is where a national programme for vocational rehabilitation would be something important to develop. We have many areas of good practice at the individual service level, but there are still gaps in the Irish system and a coherent system to address some of those would be helpful.

A huge amount of work was done under the Make Work Pay initiative the Department of Social Protection led on with respect to the financial incentives and disincentives to taking up employment. That is an area where there has been progress. The earnings disregard specifies the particular amount a person may earn before he or she loses his or her entitlement to disability allowance or the medical card. It has been steadily raised over the last number of budgets and it is showing people exiting disability allowance to take up employment. Tracking that progress would help address the question the Senator is asking about the cost-benefit analysis. It is also worth making the point that sometimes the costs are borne by one sector of Government and the benefits felt by another and that has proved quite challenging in securing cross-departmental co-operation on some of these issues in the past.

The Senator is right the OWL project has a been a great example of good practice and showing good outcomes for disabled people. Our understanding is it was being rolled out a bit more widely across other Departments and public bodies and we would certainly like to see that built on. A common theme running through the remarks I have made is there are areas of good practice or where something has been trialled, and it is about capturing the learning as to what worked and what did not from all those initiatives and then putting in place something that can be consistently applied across the country.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I thank the Senator. I give apologies on behalf of Deputy Canney as I neglected to do so at the beginning of the meeting.

I have a few comments and questions of my own. I thank the NDA officials for the opening statement. It encompassed an awful lot of what we discuss at this committee regularly. We hear from people with lived experience. There is nothing in there we could disagree with. Obviously, everything is important.

Coming from and educational background, I am particularly interested in education, the EPSEN Act and the move towards inclusive education. Has the authority any role in the review going on at the moment? It was opened to submissions, so anybody or any organisation could make a submission, but has the authority a larger role than that? I ask because, as Dr. Hartney said, the EPSEN Act was brought in in tandem with the Disability Act, yet the latter is not being reviewed. This committee has called for it to be reviewed, as has the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. The indication we are getting so far is it will not be, but we have a number of Departments coming to our next couple of meetings and we will be putting that to them. We hope there will be a change of mind there. It is a prime example of what we mean when we talk about Departments working in silos. For example, we are all aware there is a huge backlog in the assessment of need process. One will hear the Minister of State with responsibility for disability saying people do not need a diagnosis to get services, but if someone wants to get a child a place in a special class or special school then he or she needs a diagnosis for the child. That is an example of two Departments not having a joined-up approach to this and that leading to problems. I share the concerns around how while there is increased investment in special education and in our schools, it is in many ways leading to more segregation. Some schools are very good at having a special school or autism class, but with the students being integrated into mainstream for part of the day. That is working well, but not all schools are doing that. Has the authority a role in regard to the EPSEN Act?

Mr. Dharragh Hunt

I can answer that very quickly. We are on the advisory group. As the name suggests it is only advisory. There is a working group, which is probably more the decision-making group, and we are on a wider one with many other stakeholders. I assure the Leas-Chathaoirleach we have input at that on the need for the Disability Act to be reviewed from the first day we met. People introduced themselves and what they were going to bring to it and one of the things we said really clearly was we could not understand why the two pieces of legislation were not being reviewed in tandem. With the EPSEN Act, there has been huge engagement. I think the survey has been answered by something like 12,000 and there has been much engagement, but we are engaging with families on two pieces of legislation that are supposed to be intertwined. Even if the other one is done in 18 months time or so, it seems ineffective and probably unfair on people. People's lives are not like that. You do not talk about education one day and another day talk about something else. Your life is your life and to have to input separately is not fair. We definitely inputted that the Acts should have been reviewed together.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth was chastised, for want of a better word, by the UN in the context of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the lack of progress on inclusive education. It is, therefore, something that needs to be progressed. The NCSE has prepared a document and it was submitted to the Department, but I do not think we have got a departmental response as yet. I agree we need a plan on how that is going to work.

The ratification of the optional protocol comes up a lot as well. Dr. Hartney said it is a mechanism people can proceed with where all national avenues of appeal have been exhausted. She indicated awareness of national avenues may need to be made clearer. Whether it is disabled peopled advocating for themselves, including where their rights or needs are not being met, or parents advocating for the rights of their child, people are in many cases totally exhausted. They have been fighting the fight since day one and the process through the WRC, if people are aware of it, is often protracted and this is very off-putting. There may or may not be costs attached as well and this may be prohibitive. Is there anything to be done to make the whole process somewhat easier for people? None of us will go near the courts if we can avoid it on any issue, because there is a huge backlog, it takes so long, one is going back and forth and then there is the cost, as I said.

Is that an issue as well? Is the thought of a legal process off-putting for people who already had to fight for everything they have got and still have not got what they need?

Dr. Aideen Hartney

I would think that is probably very much the case in many situations. It could be helpful to resource some of the independent advocacy services to a greater extent to assist people so that it is not all on them to fight the fight. Something such as the National Advocacy Service cannot get through all the complaints or points they would have raised during the course of a year. There are also other advocacy bodies for older people's services out there as well. Resourcing would certainly be an issue in that regard. Yes, a legal battle a is a daunting process for anybody and, as the Leas-Cathaoirleach said, if a person is starting that already frustrated and at the end of their tether, that would be even more so. The process to go to through the UN committee and up to the optional protocol is quite torturous in and of itself. That is something to be mindful of as well. If public bodies are more mindful of their existing obligations in relation to complaints mechanisms, appeals and inquiries, and then if people are more aware of the supports and mechanisms that can be offered through something like an ombudsman service, that would be helpful in that regard as well.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator O’Loughlin and others mentioned employment. We are a laggard in relation to Europe in the number of people who are employed. Dr. Hartney talked about different surveys that have been carried out around people declaring a disability. In my previous job, there was a confidential survey and one declared whether one had a disability. However, many people who had disabilities, some physical, but especially those with mental health conditions, were very reluctant to admit to that because they felt they were going to be stigmatised. Therefore, we probably do not have accurate figures reflecting the numbers.

In addition, I visited EmployAbility recently in my area. It does such important work in helping disabled people, autistic people and people with mental health conditions either get into or back into the workforce. They said they are still coming across an attitude with employers where they do not want to employ people with disability. I do not know how we overcome that. There has to be much more awareness and more accommodations. Even in employing autistic people, they have a misconception about autism. While the awareness is improving, much more needs to be done. How do we reach out? Is there some way? I know setting targets or even certain quotas was mentioned. It is done in the public sector but it would be much more difficult in the private sector. Is there anything that can be done to improve this?

Dr. Aideen Hartney

This involves a range of factors. There are many private sector employers that have embraced the equality, diversity and inclusion, EDI, agenda. We sometimes find that disability can be coming at the tail end of all of those considerations and they think they have done a great job because there are LGBTQ or ethnic minorities employed. It is about looking at all grounds equally in that regard.

Some of the work we have done has shown that there is a clear business case for employing people with disabilities. Some of it is about greater likelihood of retention, so there is lower recruitment. There is a whole range of things. There is probably more work to be done in making that business case effective and making employers aware of that. It would help overcome some of those challenges and battles. There is then whatever supports Government can offer, whether it is in terms of the reasonable accommodation side of things or about linking employees and employers. We persistently hear from employers that they do not know where to find somebody with a disability. We hear that they would love to employ somebody but they do not know where to find them. Some kind of referral mechanisms might be helpful.

It is about that EDI agenda and highlighting those areas of good practice and where they have benefited the employer. That is probably what is most motivating to people on the business end of things.

Dr. Rosalyn Tamming

Dr. Hartney mentioned Employers for Change earlier. They facilitate some peer-to-peer learning among employers. I think employers find that helpful because they feel they are in a safe space where they can ask questions of employers that have employed people with disability and can learn and get support that way. More of that would be good. The OECD did a piece of work with us two years ago now that was published in 2021. It was on the theme of engaging employers and how to get employers to employ people with disabilities and what some of the barriers are. That was interesting. They felt Ireland’s public employment service was a little bit behind the curve compared with other European countries in that proactive approach. That was one of the key findings. There is definitely some work to be done in that area.

Much of it is sometimes left to the Department of Social Protection because it has that employment focus through Intreo. However, other Departments need to play a more active role as well.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The sectoral plans under the Disability Act were talked about. Were they produced for a number or years or was it just once?

Mr. Dharragh Hunt

It was just the first round. There seemed to be a bit of ambiguity in the legislation as to whether they just had to be reviewed after three years or reviewed and a new one produced. I think that is one of the reasons they fell into abeyance. It may only be a tweak in legislation to ensure that is clear that it was not a once-off initiative.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

It is something worth looking at.

Dr. Aideen Hartney

Absolutely. We talked earlier about how we felt Part 2 of the Disability Act should have been reviewed in tandem with the Education for Persons with Special Needs Act and whether that is still a possibility or not. There would be a fair few areas of the Disability Act where some updates would be required to reflect developments. We suggest that the entire piece of legislation is looked at, rather than a section in isolation. There could be stuff on the employment question that could be tackled through Part 5. Part 4 is an interesting one in terms of genetic information, disclosure of that and how it works in tandem with GDPR. There have been developments since 2005 that could be reflected in the Act. We would like the definition of “universal design” broadened in terms of section 6 of the Act. It is probably just timely to look at it all and look at it as a holistic piece of legislation that could underpin implementation of UNCRPD in an Irish context. Plans for the various sectors of activity would be helpful in that regard. Tying to them to just a few Departments was of its time and it is time to take another look at that.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Absolutely. I thank our guests for their insightful contributions. As I said, a number of Departments have been invited to meetings in the coming weeks on the back of this one, so we will be putting the questions and points the guests made today to them.

The meeting is now adjourned. The next meeting of the joint committee will be in private on Wednesday, 26 April 2023 at 3.15 p.m.

The joint committee adjourned at 11.18 a.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, 27 April 2023.