Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of our guest speakers for appearing before the committee today and for sharing their insights on disability-proofing and data. It is a very important topic, but probably not on the face of it because people do not very much realise how important it is. Disability-proofing is simply ensuring people with disabilities are considered and included in the development and implementation of structures, policies and practices. Unfortunately, despite this being mandatory, we can safely say it does not happen in any meaningful way in the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

My first questions are for the DPO Network. This topic intersects with several articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, not only Article 31 but also the general obligations on participation in Article 4 and the general equal recognition before the law in Article 12. In that vein, I would like to zoom out for a minute and talk about the network’s capacity to be able to participate in these processes. As DPOs, they perform a vital function in our realisation of the convention, but equally, with their small organisations, more and more is being demanded of volunteers, who themselves have lives and a myriad of challenges faced by disabled people in Ireland. I do not know how many times we have had DPOs before this committee, not to mention all of the other work these organisations are doing. What do DPOs need from the State and State bodies to help them fulfil their role as envisaged by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities?

The DPO Network highlighted the importance of applying a consistent model of disability rights in data collection. Will the network elaborate on that and on its significance?

The state party to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disability states that the National Disability Authority undertakes, commissions and collaborates in research projects and activities on issues relating to disability. Has this state party engaged with the DPO Network on this type of work?

If there is time afterwards, Chair, I ask the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, in its role as an independent monitoring mechanism for the convention, to summarise its assessment of Ireland’s compliance with Article 31. The commission has highlighted the importance of disaggregated data in legislation for monitoring the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and for disabled people to realise their rights. Will the commission explain a little bit more what it means by that? Does it have a sense of areas where we have a lack of data that is connected with violations of disabled people’s rights?