Dr. Rosaleen McDonagh:

It would be remiss of me not to mention gender, as Deputy Murnane O'Connor has done. There is much talk of unconscious bias. The lived experience of many women with disability is that men are often favoured. Their experience becomes the norm instead of more gender-neutral policy-driven legislation.

Our lives are not one-dimensional. We have gender, ethnicity and sexuality. All of these things come into play. We also have socioeconomic and educational disadvantage. These all play out in the lives of disabled people in the form of discrimination, sexism, racism, poverty, lack of access and adverse outcomes. We do not live one-dimensional lives.