Ms Catherine Naughton:

I thank the Chairman and members for inviting me to join this meeting as a witness. I am in Brussels and, therefore, will attend remotely although I would have loved to have been able to go to Leinster House.

The European Disability Forum is a European network of organisations that represent persons with disabilities. Our members includes organisations like the Disability Federation of Ireland and European-wide organisations like the European Union of the Deaf and the European Blind Union. The forum is a very inclusive umbrella organisation and our main objective is to promote the rights of persons with disabilities in Europe.

In terms of situations of risk and emergencies, people with disabilities are routinely excluded from full participation in everyday life. When society breaks down as a result of conflict or a natural event, including those we see today in ever greater frequency caused by climate change, the barriers people with disabilities face are exacerbated. The result is they are more exposed to risk and abuse and have less access to aid and support.  This reality applies to all persons with disabilities. When we think of the war in Ukraine, we immediately realise that somebody who uses a wheelchair would have difficulty entering an inaccessible bomb shelter.  We also need to remember that the community of people with disabilities is very diverse. A whole range of people in our community may experience barriers in the scenario of trying to safely reach or stay safe in a bomb shelter. Imagine people who require daily support; people with essential dietary requirements or therapies; people with psychosocial disabilities, autism, dementia or an array of neurological conditions; or people who are deaf and so have difficulty hearing air raid sirens.

My intervention refers to all persons with disabilities and their families. In the scenario I describe where a person cannot get to a bomb shelter, members know his or her family members will stay with that person.  So the number of people affected by inaccessible non-inclusive disaster risk reduction is great. Recently, I met a woman, Tetyanna, who has arrived from Ukraine and is a wheelchair user, as is her husband. She wanted to stay in Kyiv, but when there were air raid alerts, she wanted her son to go in the bomb shelter but he would not go without her, so she had to flee. Therefore, we are talking about a huge number of people being affected.

Some of the specific examples of this exclusion include policies of residential institutionalisation, which increases the risk of exposure to a person-to-person spread pandemic, like we saw during Covid-19, and makes evacuation more difficult during extreme weather events such as flooding and wildfires or situations of conflict like in the Ukraine; inaccessible life-saving aid; inaccessible transit centres for displaced populations; and inaccessible information about emergency services and basic services but also about long-term integration and social protection for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. People who live in poverty are often more likely to be impacted by climate change. As members will know, persons with disabilities in Ireland and across Europe are more likely to live in poverty, exposed, as they are, to discrimination, unemployment and underemployment, and the extra costs related to disability that they face every day, such as the cost of accessible transport, housing and other disability-related supports that they often must for pay out of their own pockets.

Sometimes policymaking is not inclusive. As well as not including the requirements of persons with disabilities, some new policies can have a negative impact on their lives, such as the potential for carbon pricing schemes to reinforce social inequality. There is not enough official and academic documentation of the extent of discrimination, but studies after the great east Japan earthquake in 2011 showed that the mortality rate for persons with disabilities was two to four times the rate for the rest of the population. Recent examples of crises in Europe, where many of these situations have happened, include the Covid pandemic, and we all know what happened in residential care institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic; flooding in Germany in 2021, where there were also examples of people in residential care facilities who could not be evacuated; and the war in Ukraine, where one can see examples every day. Ireland must deal regularly with flooding, which affects the whole population, including persons with disabilities and their families. The development of strategies to ensure inclusive and accessible preparedness and responses to flooding must be done in partnership with the disability community.

From the examples I am giving, it is clear there are many overlapping fields of work that must better focus on disability inclusion and better connect with each other in order to address the problem. These fields include: immediate humanitarian action and long-term response and recovery to build back better; climate action; disaster risk reduction and management; civil protection; and social protection. Depending on the context, policy makers and technical professionals working in these fields may have to address different specific priorities.

Some of the main issues relevant for the greater European region are clear and crosscutting, as identified in a very recent review of disability inclusion in national disaster risk reduction policies in Europe and central Asia. The review and policy paper, which are included in our submission, identified priority gaps and make detailed recommendations for change. Broadly speaking, these fall under the categories of: systematic collection and use of disability disaggregated data; meaningful participation of organisations of persons with disabilities in decision-making; accessibility including communication; risk information; critical infrastructure and services; improved expertise on disability inclusion; and a dedicated budget to ensure disability inclusion. National governments, including not only Ireland but all EU member states, are ultimately responsible for ensuring this under their obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Specific articles are particularly relevant and Dr. Keogh may refer to some of them. I will draw attention particularly to Article 4.3 on meaningful participation of persons with disabilities through their representative organisations and Article 11 on situations of risk and emergencies. They require a whole-of-government approach. We see this in the way the committee discusses all of its topics. The committee, with its commitment to dialogue with the disability community and its coverage of horizontal disability rights issues, is a very positive example of the type of meaningful participation foreseen in Article 4.3 of the convention.

I want to note the range of expertise found in community and voluntary sector in Ireland. It is a very important resource for planning. Within the sector we have specialist knowledge, expertise and assets that can be deployed quickly, including on accessible transport, equipment, knowledge and relationships that can support effective inclusive preparedness and responses. I saw this at a recent meeting with the Disability Federation of Ireland and its members when discussing the response to Ukraine.

It is essential to stress that all of these scenarios, from disability proofing to emergency management and dealing with displaced populations as a result of any crisis, require the collaborative, adequately resourced and long-term commitment of many Departments. Targets such as disability inclusive emergency preparedness and response must be complemented by similar work on disability inclusive health, education, social protection and employment policies.

International frameworks and guidelines exist and are being implemented. The European Forum for Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap 2021-2030 is an example of how policy improvement is continuing at this level. It should be the priority of national governments to support this work and replicate it in their own settings, according to their own contexts and challenges. As well as working towards more equitable societies, studies have shown that disability inclusion is an investment and not a cost. This requires building capacity in government, the disability community and all agencies involved in disaster management and preparedness and climate action. Since it is critical to ensure meaningful participation of persons with disabilities through their representative organisations, the European Disability Forum and our members in Ireland remain at the disposal of the committee for any further work it explores in this field.

By its nature, disaster preparedness is preparing for things we do not know will happen. We never expected the Covid-19 pandemic. We did not expect this war on European soil. We need to learn from all that we could have done to prevent the dreadful impact on persons with disabilities so we are really prepared. All we know is that we do not know what will be the next thing we need to face. I thank committee members for their attention and I look forward to listening to the contribution of Dr. Keogh and hearing the questions afterwards.