Ms Sinéad Gibney:

On the optional protocol, it is up to this committee to keep the pressure up. We will be keeping the pressure up.

To make the committee aware, as the independent monitoring mechanism designate, we are prepared and ready, and part of that has been the establishment and implementation of our disability advisory committee. That committee has been going through the CRPD article by article with in-depth exploration of what that looks like. It is just a question, I would argue, of keeping that pressure on.

In terms of the participation piece, again it is in the convention. Really it is about opening up the doors and being open. As many women are represented on this committee here, they are very much aware of the pathway to politics for women and the barriers that I am sure that they have experienced barriers on an individual level and, as a gender, that we have experienced.

The way I see it, as somebody who is in a position of influence, I am here because of the privileges that I hold and I see it as my right and obligation, in the work that I do, to open the doors for people who do not have those privileges. That is how members need to see it and what they need to do.

Dr. McDonagh mentioned unconscious bias. The single most effective way to combat unconscious bias is exposure to the groups whom one holds that bias towards. If a person has not worked closely with someone with a disability, if he or she has not been around and had to facilitate somebody who has a disability, that person simply cannot know. That really is what it is about. There is a level of humility that everybody in this room will have to take on in really exposing themselves to the voices of those people who have the lived experience. That is the spirit I would encourage members to take on, particularly around participation.