Mr. Eoin O'Herlihy:

I will make four or five points on how to achieve universal design and the built environment and how to use all of the capital funding in the best way in order that we actually achieve universal design. Reference was made to procurement. Section 27 of the Disability Act requires that all public bodies would write accessibility into public procurement tendering exercises. We need to ensure that we do not just specify Part M of the building regulations as the requirement to be met as we strive towards universal design. We have, for example, the national guidelines, Building for Everyone: A Universal Design Approach. There are other international standards around creating universally designed buildings and we use these on some of the projects we work on. As part of the public procurement of all of these new capital infrastructure projects, we must ensure that universal design is written into the brief and assessed as part of the actual awarding of the contract.

We need to ensure that universal design is benchmarked at all stages over the project including: writing the project brief; the feasibility; the planning; the design; the construction; and the hand over. That is very important to see how we are benchmarking projects to ensure that we are achieving universal design at all stages.

We must also ensure that we are designing beyond minimum practice. We are talking about changing places today in the context of the importance of having these in public buildings, schools, healthcare facilities and so on, but what about meeting the needs of people who may have neurodiversity impairments? What about elements such as quiet rooms, quiet areas, sensory rooms and so on? What about signage and the way-finding systems we use for people with visual impairments or those with intellectual disabilities?

It is also about the public procurement. It is about ensuring that universal design is benchmarked at all stages of the project. It is also about designing best practice rather than meeting the minimum guidance in our building regulations. It is about designing beyond the minimum regulations.