Mr. Odhrán Doherty:

I thank Senator McGreehan for her questions. She has identified key areas. The most recent research that my organisation has seen is by the Irish Sports Monitor that indicates that there is still huge gradients between people with disabilities engaging in club activities compared with people without disabilities. In terms of an inclusion overview of clubs, that research also tells us that 85% of sports clubs want to be inclusive but may not have the knowledge and awareness to make that happen.

There are a number of practical steps that could be taken. There is an organisation, in Cara, that we do support clubs with. We also heavily engage with national governing bodies and local sports partnerships. To me, the first step that a sports club can take is to sign the sport inclusion disability charter because that will create the framework and support within the club to take the first step to be inclusive. The charter covers five key areas as follows: A club must have an open attitude towards inclusion; there must be a focus on development of people so that is the volunteers, the committee and coaches; the development of inclusive activities; a club's facility considerations; and lastly, and possibly the most important, is the need to promote activities to the local community. Promotion is about making people with disabilities aware that the opportunity is there for them to participate in their local community and that the club would welcome a person with a disability.

The second step concerns awareness. One of the key areas that I have identified is the lack of knowledge and awareness among club members on how to be inclusive, which was the initial question posed by the Senator.

Our suite of training and education provides good knowledge and awareness in a number of areas, including disability inclusion training and autism in sport training, which give that basic knowledge and understanding for coaches and volunteers about how to communicate properly with a person with disability, how to set up appropriate activities and all those practical steps to create the best experience and the best environment for people with disabilities in clubs. A key element of a club is to provide education to the committee, the executive of the club. If it leads from the front that tends to filter down to the coaches and volunteers on the ground.

One of the toolkits that we are launching early in 2022 is an accessible club toolkit. Ms Duffy spoke earlier about her accessible work with local sports partnerships, LSPs, and national governing bodies, NGBs. That accessible toolkit for clubs will support the work by the LSPs and NGBs. It will create a framework for clubs to work towards creating a more inclusive environment for people with disabilities. It is a guided approach and it creates a stepped approach and framework, based on the headings of the charter for clubs to implement those changes.

We have good links with national governing bodies of sport and particularly with the local sports partnerships. They are a key link for clubs. We are in a good position in Ireland through funding from Sport Ireland and the national sports policy that every sports partnership in the country has a sport inclusion disability officer, whose role is to engage locally with clubs and disability groups to increase participation among people with disabilities in sport and physical activity. They are a local resource and a local link for clubs.

Clubs need to understand the capacity they have within the club network in terms of their coaching capacity and the capacity they have within their facilities. They also need to understand the motivations of people with disabilities wanting to join the club. We often think of people with disabilities coming to participate in our games or activities. From our point of view we would like people with disabilities to get the full experience of club life, including being able to go and spectate at a sporting event, become a committee member, become a coach and be more visible in those roles in clubs. It is not always focused on participation. We are also interested in all those other aspects of club life. We would be happy to engage with the committee again in future.