Mr. Peter Kearns:

I would like if my colleague Nem Kearns could jump in and talk with me when answering the query about disabled women. What I intend to say about personal assistants, most if not all of the councils across the country have passed a campaign motion that personal assistants, PAs, should be a right for disabled people. Recently we had a play in the Dublin Theatre Festival and in Galway looking at the history of personal assistants in Ireland and it is very clear from that play, which thankfully was supported by the Arts Council, that in terms of transport, heritage or involvement in public participation network, PPN, structures that cannot happen without effective personal assistants to have the choice and power to pick out one's clothes, have breakfast, and go with one's peers so it is important and the DPO Network would like to emphasise the need or the right of access to personal assistants.

I have one more point in terms of the words disability awareness. In our presentation we made it clear that we would like the promotion of disability equality which is not about permanent disability or person's tragedy but is about recognising how society creates barriers and looking rights and the social model approach to disability equality training being delivered by local authorities. I would like to emphasise that training should be done by disabled people connected with DPOs so I would like to emphasise the difference between disability awareness, which is a bit old hat, and disability equality which is actually led and designed by disabled people.

I would like to hand over to Nem Kearns who might like to say something about disabled women.