Ms Selina Bonnie:

I will try to be brief. First of all, I included my contact details at the back of my statement. If anybody wants to engage with me after this morning about any of the issues, he or she is welcome to contact me.

On parental assessments, what has come to the fore is that mothers with a disability are being set up to fail by the way the system is currently designed and much work needs to be done there. Ms Ní Fhlatharta might be able to speak further on that.

Briefly, the difference between a personal assistance service and a carer is that with a personal assistance service, the person with a disability is the boss. We lead our personal assistant, PA, and the PA works to our direction to do things at the time we choose in the way that we choose whereas with a carer, one does not have that choice and control.

One final point relates to something a few previous speakers raised. On ensuring that services are accessible, under Part III of the Disability Act 2005, each public agency should have an appointed access officer. Perhaps it is time for the new Department to engage with and maybe develop a register of all those access officers because I can guarantee there are many agencies that should have them that have not appointed them. The Department should then engage with the individual access officers across the country to encourage them to make their services accessible.