Mr. John Dolan:

Senators McGreehan and Bacik and Deputies Wynne and Higgins have raised a number of points and we are short on time. Deputy Higgins spoke of meetings with different Departments and steering groups. I ask the Deputy to think of this committee as pulling together the Oireachtas voice and the Oireachtas questioning about moving on the disability strategy. If the committee has what I would describe as the "project management" function, working from the Taoiseach's office down, one also has the executive side of what the committee wants to do. The committee is on the legislative side and there is also the executive side. Flowing from that would be some kind of consistency of reporting and development of the strategy. Ms Browne, interestingly, referred to the public sector duty. Every Department must do a statement of strategy. I do not believe there is any statement of strategy in this Government that should not be referencing the public sector duty, and no strategy should not reference the commitment to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. On the optional protocol, it was interesting to hear the point made about the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte. That sounds to me a bit like the old speak: "We were waiting for somebody else to do it." I absolutely do not see any reason it cannot be ratified now.

Senator McGreehan spoke about the frustration around needing to do so much more consistent implementation. I go back to the point that we need the two pillars. We have one pillar. As I said earlier, in the run up to the general election the Oireachtas disability group looked for two infrastructural pieces, one of which was there would be a committee such as this, which is brilliant to have. The committee is handicapped and frustrated by the circumstances that we are currently in. I know that members are mad to get out and get at it, and to be able to have more people with disabilities, and organisations and groups in to the committee. To be really effective, are the committee members going to be able to go around and quiz every Department? Not really. This is why the committee needs the Taoiseach's office to put that project management in place. It must be remembered that there is a National Disability Authority that is funded by the State, which could do a lot of the workshops element and the backroom work on that.

Senator Bacik referred to the huge numbers of groups, the congregated settings and decoupling funding. These are big issues. I would also add the other issue of people. Youngsters, people our age and much younger than us, are being given an absolute life sentence of going into a nursing home. The first thing we must do is ask if we can stop one person going in this month and another next month. This needs community-based funding for personal assistants, home help and other supports to wrap around people, and for us to sit down to listen to those people and what they want from their lives exactly. The rest of us come into it in trying to make that happen.

With regard to the huge number of groups, there are two things going on. There is the fundamental right in the Constitution to form associations and unions. The point about there being too many groups keeps coming up. Are there too many political parties? Are there too many independent schools around? There are 1,500 or 1,700 schools that are all independent. Yet, they can work in a unified way. This can also happen with the organisations and groups. Everyone now has to face into being an implementer, a minder and an owner of the convention. We have the script, we have the road that everyone must go down, we have the Charities Act, we have HIQA, and we have a lot of State-funded regulatory authorities to put smacht on organisations and groups. I believe we can move through these but the critical point for the committee members is to get that pillar sponsored by the Taoiseach's office, which is the project management piece. It will make it manageable and it will be the executive part of what the committee is trying to do with the Oireachtas.