Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I would echo what the Chair said. There are so many questions and so many issues arising that it would be good if we could even get written input on some of them because we are going theme by theme. I would welcome that kind of nuanced expertise and experience around the issues of means testing and how it could be removed, and how the costs of disability should be better recognised. I was struck by the fact that employment opportunities are not only double-glazed but sometimes triple glazed. On the transfer into remote working, how do we ensure that it is empowering and how do we completely overhaul the approach to reasonable accommodation that we have at present? I would welcome written input on those issues. I am signalling those points because I have many questions as well.

We came into this session knowing that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities mandated us as a committee to ask how our approach to disability can be gender proofed but what has come across so strongly from the presentations is that our supports for women in Ireland also need to be disability proofed.

I was stuck by what Ms McGovern said about violence. Something I care a lot about is coercive control, which was brought in by the Seanad as an offence. I was wondering about the other more insidious and financial abuse of women with a disability, if Ms McGovern wanted to comment on that, and how we could understand or communicate that better. I am also struck by the fact that this can happen in the home and that idea that the home can be an institution, and even a place of institutional abuse.

In terms of the choice in living issue, Ms Ní Fhlatharta already gave a nuanced piece so that we do not have a blunt tool that is only about the numbers in a building but that looks to how we ensure there is choice around how people are living, be it with a community of like-minded people, with friends, with family or alone. Will Ms Ní Fhlatharta comment further around the issue of personal assistants and the difference, for example, between care supports and personal assistants in terms of empowering people in making those choices, empowering people around cultural and political participation, and particularly around empowering people within their family relationships to have more equal family relationships and that fuller relationship piece?

This brings me to what Ms Bonnie was talking about, which I am really interested in and which others have talked around. I will be bringing Ms Bonnie's points back to the reproductive rights group in the Oireachtas because they are really important. Could Ms Bonnie expand further around parental capacity assessments because I have some concern around the way those are applied to women with a disability?

Statistics have been talked about. Any written input is great, but how could our consultations be better designed so that we get input from people? That means thinking about the web accessibility directive but maybe also designing consultations in a better way.

Returning to Ms McGovern on the community level, I refer to that aspect of shaping communities. How do we ensure that it is not only about community supports but about supporting women to shape their communities and culturally participate in them? I am concerned that in the last recession we saw that community supports were really caught. Everything was directed towards jobs and nothing else. How important is it that we build up our community infrastructure from the perspective of women with a disability?

I thank the witnesses for everything. I look forward to a longer conversation over the year to come.