Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for the opportunity to join in this important discussion today on how we align education in Ireland with the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, UNCRPD. I want to commend the work of the Joint Committee of Disability Matters and I thank the members for the work they are doing in applying such a focus to this issue. It is really important that the Government prioritises this work so people with disabilities can be empowered to reach their full potential and fulfil their ambitions and dreams as equal citizens and important contributors to both our society and our economy.

This work is one of the reasons I became involved in political life. I am very pleased to be able to share a number of new policies we are advancing to progress our vision for a third level education system designed so that students with disabilities are successful in their educational and training goals and so that we build systems and structures that are focused around the needs of the student rather than the needs of the system in and of itself. I have been following some of the contributions of previous contributors to this committee and indeed many experts including those in the National Disability Authority who continue to provide advice to me and my Department so that we can make the changes we need to open up access, to improve progression and success rates for people with disabilities in third level education.

The UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities reminds us that disabled people are diverse, as we all are, and that disability is an evolving concept. These are two really important things to state at the outset because they are fitted into the work we are endeavouring to do. There cannot be a one-size-fits-all-approach just as there cannot be for any group of people. Schemes, initiatives, structures need to be flexible and we also need to recognise that understanding of the word disability is evolving and our schemes need to be willing to evolve and react to that as well. The preamble to the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities recognises clearly that attitudinal and environmental barriers for disabled people hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. We are starting to break down those barriers at third level but I also want to be clear and acknowledge here today that this is a journey with plenty of road left to travel. Article 24 of the convention regarding education for those with disabilities calls for states to ensure the realisation of rights for persons with disabilities to education through an inclusive education system at all levels, and for all students, without discrimination and on an equal basis with others, while ensuring reasonable accommodation of the individual’s requirements is provided. A long-held aim of education policy in this country has been to ensure everybody is afforded the opportunity to develop to their full potential. The higher and further education sector can be an engine for economic growth. It can also be an instrument to promote diversity and enhance social cohesion. Indeed for the State, I believe education is the single greatest driver of equality and we must ensure any discrimination is eliminated across all pathways. I want to ensure we create opportunities and support people to engage in education and training at every stage of their lives; to learn, to upskill, to reskill and to grow. As a new Department which is only two years old, it is key to our priorities, and to my own political priorities, that our Department's statement of strategy specifically includes inclusion and support learning for all as its strategic goal.

I will briefly take you through some of my Department's initiatives and our ongoing work to align third level with the convention. Shortly I will bring the new access plan for higher education to Government. I am very excited about this. It probably would be better to have this conversation after that so I am happy to come back again and to brief the committee on it once it has been brought to Government. To give the plan its full title, it is the Strategic Action Plan for Equity, Participation and Success in Higher Education. It will be the plan up to 2028. We have made a lot of progress in Ireland in increasing participation rates in higher education across all levels. Our target under the last national access plan was for 8% of new people beginning college to be people with a disability. That target was surpassed and the current figure stands at 12.3%. The next plan will go further and will be more ambitious in relation to targets building on success to date but it is also going to try to think about this issue in a different way. We cannot think about inclusion now just in terms of access. Access is really important as it helps someone get in the door but what happens then? What happens when they try to come out the other side of the door after their journey through college, is as important. Being blunt and truthful, we can flatter ourselves in saying it is great that we got more people in the door. It is great in terms of the college experience, but also important is what happens after in terms of jobs, employment and postgraduate study. We want to look not just at the access piece but whether students got to complete their courses, did they get to move to postgraduate study, did they find employment, did they get to participate in public and civic life and what was their experience like. Another truth lies behind headline figures. This comes back to my point about the definition of disability and it needing a much broader understanding. We have not being measuring participation rates for students with intellectual disabilities, for example. This frustrates and angers me. That changes from now. The new national access plan will have as a priority group, students with intellectual disability. For the first time, students with intellectual disabilities will be part of the national access plan. This is important for a couple of reasons. It is important because it is the right thing to do but it is also important because we need to start measuring in order to develop data here so that we can put in place the right policies.

I am pleased to say we have moved ahead of the national access plan and announced a new funding stream for autistic students and for students with intellectual disabilities. These programmes are called PATH, the Programme for Access to Higher Education funding. There are two parts to it. The first starts in September. Every college in Ireland has been given a pot of money to roll out universal design. I am very excited about this. Universal design is the core to achieving the objectives on the convention. This funding can be used for things like sensory rooms, way-finder apps, student and staff training, which I know is an issue that has come up in this committee on a few occasions. It will lesson the feeling that autistic students tell me about when they arrive in the college campus and feel like they have arrived in a very large place, a place that is perhaps very difficult to navigate. This is about universal design which will benefit autistic students but being universal design, it will benefit all students. That is the first pot of the new fund.

The second funding pot is also very exciting. The second is a competitive call for colleges and universities to put in place programmes for students with intellectual disabilities. This arose from a conversation I had with a group of parents, all mothers in fact, of adult children with Down's syndrome. One mother said to me that not only does she not see her child progress after school like all other parents, she has to watch her child regress in front of her eyes. What a profound and heartbreaking thing for any parent to have to say. We have the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability and Senator Clonan who I see on my monitor here knows it well. It is a great programme but I am fed up going around saying how great it is that we have a centre for people with intellectual disabilities in Trinity. I am so proud of what it does and it is brilliant but when are we are going to do this in the other universities and colleges? Why can we not have models like this right across the sector? The purpose of this fund, worth €3 million a year out to 2026, is to invite applications to come forward from the sector to provide programmes for people with intellectual disabilities. A good outcome here will be to be oversubscribed and for me to have to seek more funding. That is where we want to get to. The initial feedback and enthusiasm, and I thank my colleagues for their work on this, from the sector is encouraging. I think we will get a lot of good proposals coming forward. We will start funding those programmes from September 2023. The first pot will fund the universal design from this September onwards and the new programmes around intellectual disabilities the following September.

On the further education side, and I mention this as it is really important, a broad range of supports is provided through the Education and Training Boards, ETBs, to support participation of all learners including people with disabilities. Data from SOLAS show 11,376 learners with a least one type of disability were enrolled in further education and training programmes . The Further Education and Training, FET, sector has very clearly nailed its colours to the mast. It has fostered inclusion as one of its key priorities in its new strategy. In real terms, this means initiatives such as further development of universal design for learning, UDL. For example, SOLAS published a UDL guide for FET practitioners. I understand this has been widely used right across our education and training boards now. The focus also means more research into barriers to FET for the long-term unemployed and for other vulnerable groups, many of whom have a disability. Building on its 2017 research, SOLAS intends to commission further research and examine barriers to participation in FET with particular reference to persons with disabilities.

It is rolling out specialist training provision programmes to train those working with people with a disability who have higher support needs. The FET strategy currently under evaluation commits to implementing the recommendations of that specialist training provision programme through the lifetime of the strategy.

The fund for students with disabilities, FSD, is available to assist students in further and higher education institutions. Deputy Tully and I had an important exchange on this in the Dáil last week. The FSD is the main funding source supporting participation by students with disabilities in approved further and higher education courses. It also supports students from Ireland to study abroad, on approved courses in the EU and the UK, including Northern Ireland. In the higher education sector, the number of students eligible for supports under the fund has increased from 10,097 in 2016-17 to 14,358 in 2019-20.

In the interests of colleagues, I will skip through the rest of my statement and take it as read. On the apprenticeship front, I point out to members that we want to diversify our apprenticeship population. We are establishing a new group on access to apprenticeships. There are barriers in that regard that need to come down.

As regards the issue of reasonable accommodation in the context of the physical infrastructure of buildings, which is important, the HEA is finalising what it describes as a space survey. It is going through all our buildings. As part of the survey, all higher education institutions have been asked to indicate the compliance of their buildings with Part M of the building regulations. This survey will be regularly updated. For the first time, we will have a full map of all our facilities and it will be regularly updated. I intend to publish it in the coming months once I receive it. It may be a useful reference point for the committee as well.

There is a final issue I wish to flag because it is important. One of the policy challenges and anomalies we have relates to part-time learning. Many students with disabilities tell me that part-time study might work better for them. I am not generalising but, for some students with a disability, it might work better. I have received examples from many committee members of students who may wish to do a four-year degree over five or six years, for example. There is a need to change the SUSI support scheme and the likes to reflect that. We have asked Professor Tom Collins and Professor Anne Looney, who are co-chairing our funding the future group, to prioritise this work. We need to define what is meant by "part-time". Part-time study for students with a disability is an area we could try to prioritise in terms of SUSI reform so that we are not just encouraging people to take up part-time study where it works for them, but actually ensuring the financial supports are in place to match it. I will leave it there.