Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Following on from that, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD, is generally hailed as championing the rights of people with intellectual disabilities explicitly and equally with other categories of impairments such as physical or sensory ones. Due to the overrepresentation of people with intellectual disabilities in unemployment figures, can our witnesses share their expertise on what job support schemes have worked well? What support do our witnesses feel that our committee should be lobbying for?

I also have a question for the Irish Deaf Society. We note that the society is a founding member of the Disabled Peoples Organisation Coalition, DPO Coalition. Can the society please elaborate on this coalition and its involvement with the State’s Disability Participation and Consultation Network? Are people with disabilities sufficiently reflected on the State’s network?

My last question to the LEAP advocates is that they called for a normal and ordinary life for all children. This is something that has been raised with me through my work on this committee but also in a personal capacity as a mother of a child with additional needs. I know that some parents feel more secure by their children attending a special school as they may feel that their needs are definitely going to be met where others would have a different opinion in that their child would be best placed in a mainstream school and integrated, as referred to by Ms Fitzgerald-Graham, into an ordinary school. Can Ms Fitzgerald-Graham shed some light on that divergence and on her experience of the community and if there is a general preference for mainstream schools?