Ms Amy Hassett:

I have two points. The first relates to the resourcing of DPOs. Everything Ms Browne said is exactly on point but I want to add one other thing. As DPOs, we need to know that the contributions we are making to Departments and State bodies on various things are actually having an impact. It is very difficult. We are all doing this in our own time. For us to secure and maintain funding and to motivate ourselves and support members and people to build capacity within our network, we need to know that what we are doing is having a demonstrable impact on disabled people. We are consulted an awful lot. We are asked for submissions on various different topics probably at least once a week, most of which we do not have the resources to provide. When we do, there is no guarantee that what we are saying is going to be taken on board. Often it is not. I will give one specific example. Ireland recently released its third national strategy on gender-based violence. As part of that process, we and the Disability Participation and Consultation Network held a consultation and collaboration with Inclusion Ireland. Nem Kearns can speak to that. As part of that, we spoke about different challenges experienced by disabled people, including the increased risk of gender-based violence people for who are disabled. If you are disabled you are twice as likely to experience gender-based violence and that will increase quite significantly if you have a psychosocial or intellectual disability. In the entire document that was produced by the Government, the only time disabled people or the word "disability" were mentioned was in the name of our two organisations. There was nothing in that strategy that related to disabled people. There were no mechanisms to specifically protect disabled people and nothing to ensure existing mechanisms are made accessible to disabled people. There was no mention of disability proofing. There was absolutely nothing. We hold these consultations in our own time and provide the submissions and there is no guarantee that they are impacting on policy. We need to look at that. Half of the problem is that disability issues are seen as separate to other issues. This is contrary to the UNCRPD. The UNCRPD says that disability must be involved and engaged with as part of all policymaking. That is just not the mindset we have currently. I just wanted to highlight that because because I think it is really important.

The second thing is about collaboration on research projects. As time goes on, we are being engaged a little bit more. We are currently engaging with the NDA on a piece of research about the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act so we are part of the advisory group on that. As Ms Browne said, we are a very new network but so far we have been involved in a couple of different capacities.