Ms Amy Hassett:

On behalf of Disabled Women Ireland, I thank the Chair and members of the committee for the invitation to speak today. We welcome the approach of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters in engaging with our representative organisations in a meaningful way.

Disabled Women Ireland is the national disabled persons organisation, DPO, representing disabled self-identified women and non-binary people. A DPO is an independent membership organisation run by and for disabled people. DPOs are separate from service providers and exist to serve and represent their members on all issues impacting them. They have an unrivalled expertise and it is essential to bring this to all conversations about disability matters. Drawing on our collective lived experience, we can provide an analysis of the systematic barriers that impact us and provide the solutions to these issues. Too often, we find ourselves spoken about but not spoken to. DPOs must receive meaningful financial and practical support to cultivate this expertise so that we are enabled to have real input in the decisions impacting our lives. This necessity has been highlighted most recently during the Covid-19 pandemic when DPOs were overlooked and ignored. This is particularly jarring given that data on disability deaths, to which other experts should supposedly have access, do not seem to exist. Historically, women have found themselves marginalised and excluded from decisions that impact their lives. Indeed, the glass ceiling that women have experienced is double-glazed for disabled women.

Disabled women are more likely to be subjected to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, yet a significant proportion of gender-based services in Ireland are not accessible to disabled women, including intimate partner violence supports. Screening tools, such as CervicalCheck and BreastCheck, are not accessible to many disabled women and nor for that matter are a number of sexual and reproductive healthcare services that others take for granted. Education and employment attainment is lower among disabled people than in the general population and is notably lower again for disabled women.

Disabled people fought for decades for remote learning and employment and were told it was impossible, yet one year ago this week, it was brought in overnight. For those in employment, there is no guarantee that working from home provisions will be supported as a reasonable accommodation in the aftermath of the pandemic. Flexible working conditions are particularly important for disabled women, who are more likely to have care responsibilities for children or other family members. These, among other factors, result in a sizeable portion of disabled women living in consistent poverty. Ireland is lagging behind the rest of Europe in adequately facing these issues, being one of the five countries with the lowest performance with regard to unemployment rates and the risk of poverty for disabled people.