Dr. Alison Harnett:

There is a great urgency in bringing the legislation through the Oireachtas. We understand and support that. With regard to the amount of time provided for consultation on the codes of practice, there was a quick turnaround over the Christmas period when we had the wave of the Omicron variant. For the DPOs and self-advocates, accessible information was not made available quickly enough. We, as service providers, were dealing with the most significant wave of Covid to date and up to 30% of our staff were off during that period. We had a six-week period, which included the Christmas period, to bring people together for a deep, meaningful engagement on the implementation of the codes. As service providers - for other groups it will be in different ways - we did not have the depth of consultation time we required for such important legislation, which will have so much impact on people's lives.

A review is necessary. We have talked about some unintended potential consequences on the ground. We have also talked about different ways that people need to be engaged with accessibly. There is plenty of potential for continuous improvement of how the codes will operate. After a year, there will need to be a multi-stakeholder consultation, which will need to be accessible. If we take the development of the recent housing strategy and the way the Housing Agency has engaged with DPOs - it provided accessible information, video explainers and a lengthy period of time to allow people to engage - that has been a model of good practice. Something along those lines, where everybody takes a co-production or collaborative approach to ensuring the people whose lives are impacted - the families, the people who support them, service providers and wider society - have an opportunity to provide meaningful input into that process, would be what I would recommend. That would allow us to look at unintentional consequences that may arise on the ground when we get these codes into operation.

What has emerged this afternoon across the board is that this is of enormous importance and complexity at the same time. There could be plenty of things that we will not know until we see this operating. It may be necessary to go back and ensure we have a chance to amend anything that needs to be amended. That would be our recommendation.