Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Seery Kearney for her contribution and her work in this area. There is quite a lot in it so let me delve in. The Senator is beyond right in regard to the whole issue of outcomes and output. This is probably more generally across the public service but we have to stop measuring just what we are putting in and start measuring what comes out the other side. I am talking about public investment. When we actually invest we cannot just say that is great and here is the press release announcing something, but what actually happened? What difference did it make? I fully agree. I hear that feedback very strongly from students and I hear it extremely strongly from the disability community and sector. That is why in my opening statement I made the point that we are going to try to shift the focus or at least re-balance the focus in the new national access plan to look at more than just access. We should not just report on access, although it is really important to keep reporting on it, but also report on what actually happened on the journey. I gave some examples earlier. Did somebody complete the course? Did somebody go on to postgraduate studies afterwards? I credited Dr. Vivian Rath for the good work he is doing on this. Did somebody get a job? That is part of the joined-up thinking that will then help. If somebody got a job then that will feed into the work on the comprehensive employment strategy, so expect a shift in that regard. I intend to bring that to Cabinet very shortly and publish probably in August or September.

A tangential point that is somewhat linked is the HEA Bill which is through the Dáil and will one day be through the Seanad, in September. That legislation will allow the HEA to have a more structured reporting mechanism on a number of issues. That will be important for accountability and transparency. It will allow the HEA to set codes, guidelines and the likes. I have no doubt this whole area of access and disability will absolutely be one.

I wish to assure members that what we are doing here has to be everything other than tokenism. If we get it right this has the ability to be as transformational as some of the decisions that were made in education years ago in regard to special needs education model. My motivation for this is that the cliff edge has, sadly for too many students, moved from in the first instance primary to secondary, and that is great, but now from secondary to third level, notwithstanding the issues that Deputy Cairns rightly highlights around pressures at second level on places. I do not dispute that but we see a much better situation in regard to special needs education at primary and secondary level than we did when I was in school. The cliff edge for far too many has now moved to third level. We cannot allow that cliff edge to exist. We cannot allow people to make all that progress, families to make all that progress and then, as I quoted earlier, have the mother of an adult child with Down’s syndrome tell me she watches her son regress in front of her.

The universal design is international best practice as to how we go about this. Rather than saying, “Will we just put in a few supports for the student with a disability?” which is important but how do we actually redesign how the college works so that it works for everybody? That is what excites me. As a reference point for the committee, the Atlantic Technological University, formerly the Institute of Technology Sligo, has been a real leader in regard to universal design. I will send a more detailed note on this to the committee but it very much includes the student voice. What we are seeing now, as we all know about universal design, is that things that make sense for those with disabilities are helping everybody. The sensory room is helping everybody. The Wayfinder app and extra technology is helping everybody. It is not just lifting the student with the disability, it is changing the whole culture of an institution.

On the joined-up thinking piece, I want to assure members that there is some. My colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, carried out as members might remember, the Cost of Disability Research report. This was published on 7 December 2021. This tried to measure the cost of disability, the additional day-to-day costs that people experience, the costs that people with a disability experience that others in society do not face. It can be also measured by the amount of additional income a household containing a person with a disability would require to achieve the same standard of living. In order to get a better understanding of the cost of disability, the Department of Social Protection commissioned Indecon to carry out a full independent cost of disability study. This was a programme for Government commitment. The research finds that there is no one cost but rather a spectrum of costs. To make a long story short, this report has now gone to the national disability inclusion strategy steering group which is chaired by our colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, who is pulling together all of the relevant Departments so that they are all at the table in terms of how we respond to this and accept the challenge. The budget is the next obvious point where Government needs to provide a meaningful response in this regard.