Ms Jacqui Browne:

Senator McGreehan has made some very interesting points. I will outline one thing that can be very helpful to the committee to be aware of and which can be of assistance to Members of the Dáil and of the county councils. They have available to them the backbone and support of the public sector duty, which is a position in law under section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act. That legislation is available in order that members can encourage and have mandated all of the issues around awareness and training and regarding the implementation of the delivery of accessible public sector services. It would be hugely beneficial for the committee to find out more about the legislation and participate in some of the training or at least increase members' background knowledge on it. We should not forget that option is available. Some county councils around the country and in urban areas are implementing the training very well.

On some of the other points, one thing struck me today, and I mean this with the best will in the world. There is a lot of frustration, we all feel frustrated and sometimes we see a solution in calling for another committee to be established. To be perfectly frank, in my opinion and that of an awful lot of disabled people to whom I talk and with whom I work all of the time, we have too many committees. The problem is we will have too many committees and then there will be no time left to do the work to implement what we want implemented. Sometimes one needs to say stop, step back and undertake a scoping or mapping exercise on how many and what type of disability-related committees exist, on whether there an overlap and whether we are duplicating efforts and thus wasting resources. One will often see the same players and actors sitting on several committees. They are getting no work done other than spending their lives attending committee meetings and saying the same thing in different places. Sometimes we need to take a step back in order that we can come back with a simple, realistic and implementable strategy right across Irish society. We must consider it as spanning the time from the cradle to the grave. We must consider the lived experience of the person and, indeed, the family and parents of children with disability. When we talk about people with disabilities, we talk about them in an inclusive way in terms of parents and partners as well. We do not want four more committees and groups but we need to take a step back. We must analyse everything and refine things. Sometimes we are loath to let go of things for fear of losing something that we think is valuable.