Mr. Andrew Geary:

I thank the committee for its invitation to address it and Ronan and Denis for their great assistance in putting together our presentation. I am here as a parent. The first thing I will point out are the enormous benefits to a family having an assistance dog. It allows the family to behave more as a family and allows a person to socialise and go to places which may have not been possible before becoming part of an assistance dog partnership. Many trips to local restaurants or on a plane or ferry would be impossible without the assistance dog partnership. Assistance dog partnerships provide health benefits as both emotional and physical needs are met and this is evident from international and national studies.

There are two distinct groups of parents in the assistance dog sector. There are approximately 450 lucky parents who are part of an assistance dog partnership. They have received dogs from the charities represented here today. These dogs have been fully trained over the course of at least two years before being placed with the family. However, these lucky people are facing problems they have not faced before. The problems relate to access to restaurants, public parks and transport. The problems have only come to light of late in this country because such a high standard had been set in relation to guide dogs and all assistance dog charities inherited the standard. There are a number of other issues for the lucky families. All the charities are financed through voluntary and charitable work. I help Ms Dowler's charity on numerous occasions throughout the year. This is illustrative of all parents in partnerships in the sector. Parents are out fundraising even though we all have children with a disability, be it physical or another type of disability such as autism. There are many wants and needs for those children.

There are also unlucky families who have not been able to get onto waiting lists. Charities are under pressure to produce partnerships but they must at all times maintain the minimum standards. There are at least 700 unlucky children on the waiting list in the sector. Those people are being targeted by the non-charity sector. Enormous amounts of cash have been handed over and there is no recourse for the families except that provided by contract law. All of the charities have been forced to close their waiting lists given the pressure on them. The charities cannot allow their standards to slip because those standards are international standards. We want to ensure all our dogs are accepted. I took a partnership dog to the UK last year. There was no problem with the dog's accreditation because the standards applied in Ireland were known.

I ask the Oireachtas to consider this issue from a parent's point of view. We ask it to review the legislation in place and take account of practice in the English speaking world where legislation has been enacted in the equality or equal status sphere where guaranteed access is approved and penalties apply where there is a lack of access to transport and accommodation. We also ask the Oireachtas to protect the service retail industry in this context by ensuring it knows that in this sector we provide dogs trained to the highest standard to ensure it will recognise the accreditation involved in the sector.

We represent a number of disability groups. We ask the Oireachtas to focus on what is required, but there is also a need to focus on what will be required in the future. There is no hearing dog assistance charity in the Republic of Ireland. As Dr. Burgoyne outlined, there are a number of other avenues our near neighbours in the United Kingdom have examined in the medical detection field.