Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

From my perspective, that was some of the most powerful and thought-provoking testimony that I have heard or seen in this room since I became a member of this committee. I thank all the witnesses for causing us to reflect on how we think, speak, act and perform as legislators working as best we can in all of their interests. It has been an eye-opening, ear-opening and mind-opening session.

Pretty much every question I would have sought to ask has been asked by my colleagues and friends on the committee. I will make one or two quick points. This is for Mr. Casey and Ms Kenny. A long time ago, I was CEO of a charity that works with children with special needs, mostly providing respite for them. Mr. Casey's perspective is interesting about how exactly we seek to support people with disabilities in this country. Perhaps the subject matter is beyond the realms of the committee. We constantly channel money towards those organisations that do valuable work, but a lot of the time have little or no input into their policymaking or structure from the very people they seek to support. On a long-term basis, first, is there any international exemplar that gets this right that we should seek to learn from? When the State supports, which it does, numerous NGOs across the spectrum who work with people with disabilities, should there be a requirement prior to receiving funding for each organisation to have a far greater representation of disabled people on their boards, so that people with disabilities themselves, the very people they seek to work with, have a greater say in how they are organised and funded and exactly what they are setting out to do? That is something we should seriously consider. I am interested in the perspectives of Mr. Casey and Ms Kenny on that.

Ms Murphy and Ms Clarke, like everyone else, spoke about exclusion. As Ms Chadamoyo Makombe said, she does not see herself. They all said that: they do not see themselves and the people they represent in the way the media seeks to tell the narrative or story of typical Irish daily life. They say they are not there, and they do not see themselves there. As Ms Kenny points out, it is much more beyond the realm of disabilities, and is totally cross-sectoral, she has interests in all facets of Irish life, yet her voice is somehow not considered a legitimate one when speaking about issues beyond disability.

I could not agree more with what Mr. Casey said about the pandemic being an exciting time. I think it was. It was visited upon us and there was a great challenge with healthcare, but it also caused us all to reflect on how we communicate with one another, form mutual interest groups and associate with and support one another.

If we do not learn from that and all the positive things that arose, we will have done our country and ourselves a great disservice. I remember one gentleman on Twitter, I cannot recall who he was, saying right in the middle of the pandemic, when we were all Zoomed up to our two eyes, that in the rush back to normality in Ireland, let us decide what parts of normal are best worth returning to. We have rushed back too quickly and forgotten about a lot of the very good and exciting things that happened during the pandemic.

On digital inclusion, I have an 81-year-old mother who is a fantastic manipulator of her iPhone and who has learned to be a really powerful communicator on social media within our local community in rural east Galway and within the wider realm of social media. She has taught herself, in essence, with a bit of help from her grandchildren. She has managed to navigate that, at times, very difficult landscape. A lot of community life where I come from in rural east Galway is centred around social media. Things are organised on social media. Discussions are had on social media about how a community can move forward and what kind of investment it needs. Is there a role for education and training boards in this? Do they or should they have a role in taking all of the great content that the organisations present have already developed and which, as Ms Clarke said, were delivered by RTÉ during the pandemic and embedding it in ETB delivery throughout the country? The ETB network is very powerful and successful. Is this an opportunity for an ETB to say it has an empty room on a Friday night, for example, in wherever it may be, so let us get people in there to learn more about how exactly they can become powerful manipulators of digital technology to work in their best interests?

Ms Chadamoyo Makombe has said she does not see herself in media. She spoke about funding. Is there an opportunity for young journalists or young people to be empowered themselves to become creators of media? Can they somehow go around the back of the mainstream media and to use a kind of a guerilla network to create their own content and output that reflects who they are, the community in which they live and the people with whom they wish to connect? Is there an opportunity for all that?

Is there a serious need right now in terms of education, certainly coming into the senior cycle in secondary schools, to empower young people to be much more analytical and critical of general media content and their consumption of it? I am deeply concerned, and I spoke to a young councillor from another part of the country this morning who is about 30 years younger than me and who is also deeply concerned, that, right now, young people do not have the critical and analytical skills to determine what is genuinely accurate information, what is misinformation and, in particular, what is misinformation directed uniquely at young people to try to send them down a particular path of understanding that is not an accurate reflection of the world in which they live.

I thank each and every one of the delegations. This has been a very powerful session.