Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My apologies, I was present for the start of the meeting and the presentations but unfortunately - or fortunately - I had to speak in the Dáil. I thank the witnesses for their contributions. As a former lecturer in GMIT, I have experience of some people with disabilities being educated and getting their degrees. The good news is that those people are now in gainful employment. They are still in contact with us and are doing well. One of the things I found about those students was that they were the centre of the class because they were so charged up for the challenge of getting an education. It is important that we nurture that in people with disabilities.

In my view, we need to start with educating our teachers and children about disabilities and how disabilities affect people. We should give people who are in the classroom with people with disabilities a better understanding and there should be more integration to make it a normal thing. What is wrong with employers is that there is a fear, when taking on somebody with a disability, about how that might work out for them or how might it affect other workers in the organisation. There is a fear factor so we need to provide education reassurance.

Are there data on how many people who go into second level education with disabilities gain employment and how many go into third level? Do we have statistics around that or an indication of how successful we are in that regard? When people with disabilities go into work, how many of them get permanent work and how much of it could be deemed tokenism? What else can we do as Oireachtas Members and as a committee to ensure everyone is treated fairly as regards education and employability? That is a lot of questions.

I recognise the work everybody is doing. I want to say hello to Ms Finn from Galway, who is from my own constituency. We have had discussions on the phone. She is a great advocate and is very interesting to talk to. I am delighted she is here today. I will just throw that open to the floor for the witnesses' feedback on my thinking and what we should be doing.