Nem Kearns:

I thank Mr. Kearns and the committee. To address Deputy Murnane O'Connor's question, I can only briefly touch on the vague outline of it as it is very detailed and will be very different from area to area and local authority to local authority. Disabled Women Ireland are the national DPO representing disabled women, girls and other gender minority people including non-binary people. Part of the issue at stake here is that, with the greatest of respect to everyone here today, we seem to continue to be talking at cross purposes to a degree. On one side there is the responsibility and duty to prioritise DPO consultation at all levels of government, including local government. However we are muddying the waters by talking about strategies for disabled people and we are not distinguishing between DPOs and non-DPOs at a local level and I think that it hindering the conversation and holding us back. The core essence of what I want to say is that we need to be very clear on that distinction and to make sure we have proper processes and mechanisms in place at a local, regional and national level to make that distinction and prioritise those voices.

In particular there is an additional duty to prioritise the voices of self-representative groups of disabled women. That currently does not happen and we cannot find information on the self-representatives, and that is key that they are self-representative and not other people speaking on our behalf,with however good they are and with whatever goodwill they have. Disabled Women Ireland have tried to join local PPNs and have been prevented from doing so. We must remember that disabled women are women and have childcare requirements and family responsibilities and all the intersecting identities that other women have. They need to be able to be involved at the decision-making level of their local communities in order to state their needs and have those built in from the design process. It is very unclear that we have a way for that to happen, currently.

That is separate to, and not more or less important than, the provision of disability services within a local authority. Those are two separate conversations. I want to mention the SICAP programme the Minister talked about. There is a key opportunity in this regard. I can see the latest programme has been extended to cover this period and will be rolled out anew in January 2024. There is a key opportunity to involve DPOs in discussing that programme, how it currently meets the needs of DPOs and how it does not, how it has been set up to properly and fully support and empower the full inclusion and prioritisation of DPOs and disabled voices and how it has not, and how we can shape it better going forward and not just to re-extend what we are doing without examining. I know there will be a research project next year to look at the levels of representation and then see from there but we do have the fantastic resource of there being DPOs and a DPO network right now. We should start the conversation with DPOs now and not wait.

We have a fantastic resource of there being DPOs and a DPO network right now. We should be starting the conversation with DPOs now and not waiting. That could be an additional piece but it should not be the only piece. Disabled Women Ireland has a huge amount of expertise and analysis on the needs and barriers facing disabled gender minorities. Just as we would not ask an individual woman around the country to give us a gendered and feminist analysis of gender gaps and barriers, nor should we ask individual disabled people. This is the role of DPOs. We are not replaceable with individual disabled people although those voices are equally important. It is not fair to place that responsibility on an individual within the community. Although we do have a huge amount of expertise on gender analysis, it is also important to note that while we have deaf members and members with intellectual disability and we do speak to those topics, we are not the experts in those areas. The committee should also be talking to the National Platform of Self Advocates and to the Irish Deaf Society and to all the other DPOs. We must remember that individual DPOs are not interchangeable. I know I did not directly address the question but I just wanted to lay that out to hopefully help the conversation for the rest of this session.