Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Hourigan makes an important point on output legitimacy in these strategies. It is one that we are noticing in all the equality strategies. I will chair four other equality strategy bodies, while the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, chairs this one. The European disability strategy ends in either 2020 or 2021 and the national disability inclusion strategy ends in 2021. We may need to look at exactly how those are framed for the next strategy. As regards the current strategy, we are not without support for it, for example, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, is giving us support. I have met IHREC and our discussion focused specifically on the public service obligation as regards employment of persons with a disability. I will engage further with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on that, initially with a view to having a circular issued to all Departments, and later across the public service, setting out further guidelines on how that obligation should be implemented. IHREC identified a gap as regards supporting Departments in doing that. The Deputy is right that the public service and Civil Service should be the best in ensuring we meeting and exceed these targets.

We are looking to increase the target to 6% in the context of the disability (miscellaneous provisions) Bill. That is one of the provisions in that legislation, which also contains other technical provisions on the National Disability Authority staff. We hope to introduce provisions to strengthen our obligations around the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. We are looking at removing from mental health legislation the concept of persons of unsound mind and allowing persons with a disability to serve on juries. The decision was taken then to allow the existing Bill to lapse and it is a priority of my Department to introduce a fresh Bill. A number of matters are consequent to that particular Bill being brought through the Oireachtas.

On the use of existing mechanisms, when we have the very strong guidelines on universal design in place, the committee will have an opportunity to bring before it State agencies, Departments and private sector bodies to ask why these guidelines are not being followed. We will look very closely at the conclusions of the committee’s hearings to see what we can do, whether that is a legislative issue, an administrative issue, as appears to be the case with the public service obligation, or a resource issue. It may also be a case, as the Deputy suggested, of bringing people into the room and locking the door until we find a concrete resolution to an issue.