Ms Derval McDonagh:

I thank the Deputy for wishing us luck on holding people to account under the UNCRPD. It is a core part of our work and frames everything we do. We have various mechanisms for doing that. We are a member of the Disability Stakeholder Group, for example. We will be involved in co-creating the next iteration of the national disability inclusion strategy. Those are just ways of trying to influence that. However, it is huge. It is a visionary piece of work and is going to take many years for people to realise their rights fully under UNCRPD, but we are very focused on it at Inclusion Ireland. We all know that today and tomorrow the State is sitting before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. We at Inclusion Ireland have been very vocal in the run-up to that. Back in September at pre-committee stage, a delegation of children went to Geneva with the Ombudsman for Children and we are proud to say one of them was a child with an intellectual disability who spoke about her story and the issues facing children with disabilities.

We have been very vocal, when working in partnership with the Children's Rights Alliance, about highlighting inclusive education, seclusion and restraint training for teachers and the whole ecosystem that needs to be there to support children properly. The Deputy mentioned the particular issue facing the child, namely being expelled from school. It is a huge issue but again we are almost getting to the issue when it is at a complete crisis, breakdown stage. I do not know the ins and outs of that particular case but you can hazard a guess what needed to happen is those supports needed to be built in right from the start. The school needed training and support, it needed resources and it needed the proper buildings and infrastructure. That child needed to feel welcome there and to get all of that.