Mr. Robbie Sinnott:

I would like to start, because there are so many questions. I thank Deputy Wynne for them because they are very important. I do not know which one to start with.

The issue on voting is referred to in my submission. I won a landmark High Court case against the State on voting, which is germane to the module in Article 29 and the right to political participation. We are with the Department working group at the moment. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has a franchise unit with a disability working group. There is only one DPO on that working group, which is VVI. The other members are two service providers, namely, the Irish Wheelchair Association and the Disability Federation Ireland. The National Disability Authority is also there. On our advice, the working group wants to extend to get one other DPO involved. How is it going to do this? It is not going to ask the DPOs if they want to join; it is going to go through the DPCN. I do not know how the DPCN is going to be able source it. There are 112 or 113 members, and six of them are DPOs. The NCBI is a member of this working group. It is also a member of the DPCN, as are the Irish Wheelchair Association and the Disability Federation of Ireland. These organisations would, conceivably, be influencing which DPOs go forward.

To dovetail into the other question, this is just an example of how the DPCN is completely and utterly inappropriate in terms of DPOs' rights. It certainly does not fulfil any of the obligations on the State, not even as a box-ticking exercise. The DPCN, in its footers, says that it is not a DPO space and that is not what it was set up to be. On consultation, priority must be given to the DPOs. The DPCN is not even doing that. Even if it did, it still would not suffice because it is not a DPO space. In New Zealand for example the equivalent model of our DPCN only involves DPOs. There are six national DPOs on the DPCN equivalent network in New Zealand: it is just them and the state. That is how it is. The service providers are involved in other ways. If the network recommends that certain service provisions are necessary, the state then goes to the service providers to ask how feasible this would be for them, and so on. That is a role that is envisaged.

The DPCN in Ireland comes from, more or less, the National Disability Authority report into DPOs, which was published in October 2020. It references the New Zealand model as being the best practice, but then in its putative list of DPOs at the end of one of the appendices, it gives almost every dog and devil in the disability industry in Ireland. Clearly, the National Disability Authority was very unclear as to what a DPO is. I am hoping our legal opinion has very much cleared this up, a copy of which we have sent to Dr. Aideen Hartney, the director of the National Disability Authority. I am hoping that we get some reasonable response on that. The National Disability Authority has to be accountable too. That authority has skin in the game and it is not neutral. The disabled people's organisations take up some of their space with regard to consultations and advice. It could be argued that the DPOs could take up all of their space and possibly should be controlling the National Disability Authority in what research it should be doing. This is how far-reaching the UNCRPD is. It does not just say that we as DPOs are in charge in terms of consultations but also that we should decide that the whole processes change also.

There were other questions. I was not able to make a list.

Deputy Wynne asked about voting. It is getting there but it is very slow and painstaking.

On the issue of transport and streetscapes, shared spaces are a real difficulty. If there is a segregated cycle space, for example, if it is segregated from the rest of the traffic, it means that anybody living nearby cannot be dropped off by taxi to their home. If the person is visually impaired and has a doctor's appointment at 33 Jones Street or wherever, he or she cannot be dropped off outside the doctor's surgery and must be dropped off 300 yards away or wherever the cycle lane allows.

Pedestrianisation is not good for vulnerable pedestrians, for example, people with osteoporosis and other bone conditions or those with pulmonary fibrosis. A HSE report from 2016 showed that 168,000 people find it hard to walk for more than 15 minutes. A lot of people could not even walk to the top of Grafton Street because it would take them 15 minutes to reach Brown Thomas. Access all areas is needed for cars. It does not have to be all the traffic and it does not have to mean congestion but access could cover blue badge holders and public transport, such as taxis and buses. Under Dublin City Council's proposal to the National Transport Authority in 2018, there would be no buses from Patrick Street right over to Pearse Street. The whole of the south part of Dublin city centre would not be accessible. Visually impaired people and those aged over 75 would not be able to get to the Oireachtas. Even if they could get a taxi, it could be very expensive. The committee has already heard about our levels of poverty, so that proposal is not fair either.

There are a lot of issues. Local authorities are following this agenda, which is a European style model. Nobody has ever asked "How do disabled people manage in Europe?" The answer is, "Not very well". The local authorities are not interested in that kind of research. The National Roads Authority, NRA, does not do surveys of vulnerable pedestrians. This year's report was the first time we were mentioned. For years, we have been asking for research into cyclist-pedestrian collisions but the NRA has no data and does not know.

Accessibility is a massive problem. Visually impaired and disabled people cannot get out to gigs or go to work. We cannot even do that. The new practice of placing stalls and so on in the middle of footpaths looks good but, again, it is not universal design, which is mandatory. We have a lot to teach and we are also learning all the time from our members. We are an intrinsic voice to any planning and we should not be ignored.

I was not able to make a list of Deputy Wynne's questions so I hope I have not missed out on any point.