Dr. Mary Keogh:

I thank the joint committee for giving me the opportunity to speak to it. I will follow what my colleagues have mentioned, taking in policy issues and the pragmatic mainstreaming issues surrounding disability. I will explain a little about how we work in CBM Ireland. I work with it as international director for the inclusive development initiative, which is our work on a global level in the areas of advocacy for disability inclusive development technical advice. CBM Ireland is an international disability and development organisation focused on creating an inclusive world in which all persons with disabilities can enjoy their human rights and achieve their full potential. We work with over 350 organisations implementing more than 600 projects in 59 countries throughout the world. I will speak about the very practical work we do in making inclusion a reality. Much of what sits at policy level is rarely translated into implementation.

A core area of our work is concerned with disability inclusive development, DID, technical advice. This is enabling the development sector to make progress in achieving inclusion through a global, regional and national advisory approach. Within the disability sector and the movement there is a recognition that not everything can be achieved on one's own and that it is really about collaboration and partnership. DID technical advice looks at meeting the technical needs of a global movement committed to inclusion. As our colleagues in Oxfam and others in the Dóchas working group have committed to disability inclusion, there is a need for advice on it. DID advisers are a team with varied expertise applied specifically to identifying how development sector policies, programmes and organisations can become more inclusive of people with disabilities using the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD, as a basis to ensure a rights-based approach. Advisers come from a range of educational backgrounds with a disability focus, with some coming from health, legal and disability rights perspectives. They all come together in an holistic approach to disability inclusion.

Technical advice also looks at providing practical support in achieving inclusion to support organisations to embed inclusion into their work and bridge the gap between intention and practice. We have seen over the years that it has gone across a range of sectoral areas such as water and sanitation for health and different themes. Advisers draw on each other and knowledge and staff from the broader CBM federation, where relevant, to strengthen the quality of advice. The technical advice also looks to support development agencies to work with the disability movement in mutually beneficial ways. For example, CBM Australia in its ten-year partnership with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs is looking to work on inclusion and with the partners of the Department on inclusion also. Technical advice also looks at providing advice for a range of development actors, including supporting governments in policy and policy reviews, with other sectors in development.

I will speak broadly about how we have worked the advisory process for the past few years. It has been done primarily in partnership with the disability community. If we are not working with the disability community, we will not respond to the needs of the community and could easily co-opt such a disability movement. For most, the partnership piece is really integral to doing development better; we are working with local and national communities on what inclusion means. In any of the advice and support we give, whether to governments, embassies or donor agencies, we ensure people with disabilities and disabled persons' organisations are included in the team providing the support. We prepare meetings and work with the disability community in advance to identify issues and deliver technical advice. This process has been happening for a number of years, mainly within the Pacific region but also in other areas. We are now looking at how it looks in Ireland. There has been increasing demand in the past while and it is coming from Irish Aid's commitment to disability inclusion and the policy context of the CRPD. There is increased demand for inclusion and technical support advice. At CBM Ireland we have had a number of non-governmental organisations coming forward to discuss these matters.

Representatives of CBM Ireland have just returned from the UN Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities annual meeting in New York, where we led a side event on how to bring inclusion to a reality. The key messages coming from it were about how we implemented the CRPD and the mainstream development and humanitarian actors could become involved. There is an ever-increasing demand for support on how to be disability inclusive from development and humanitarian partners. That is key. Ms Carty spoke to it from Oxfam's perspective and other development agencies are also looking at it.

This represents a new way of working for all of us in the disability sector and requires us to think about new ways of collaborating to create change, because we cannot do it on our own.

Finally, I echo my colleagues’ key messages to the committee. In order to not leave persons with disabilities behind, the Irish Government needs to materialise its commitment to the full implementation of its domestic policies such as A Better World, combined with Ireland’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. In the global scenario, it needs to support the implementation of the recently launched UN disability inclusion strategy at the 2019 conference of states parties and use its membership of the Global Action on Disability Network to support global initiatives. Irish Aid needs to support civil society on its increasing demand to foster DID into their programmes and to support and enhance partnerships which acknowledge the need for mainstreaming disability into civil society. Following the release of the DAC disability marker, it needs to ensure the data related to persons with disabilities are collected and used to inform mainstreaming of disability inclusion across its development and humanitarian assistance programming and funding streams.