Nem Kearns:

I had been looking to comment in response to Senator McGreehan's point. This is important but very simple. Disabled women are women, so flexibility on time is also very significant. Most disabled women have children or caring responsibilities, and a lot of consultations are held at times when women are less available. An easy win, therefore, to increase participation is simply to be more flexible with time.

Another point in that regard, which speaks to questions from both the members, is that we need to get rid of, or severely reduce, mediated consultation. We are often asked to consult through another body or organisation and there is little control over what comes out of that consultation. We have had consultations where entire topics were, for want of a better word, censored. Disabled women were being consulted by, say, the HSE but another body in between was holding the consultation on behalf of the HSE, so the HSE never got to hear what the disabled women had to say. That happens frequently. Similarly, an intermediary body might decide what is important arising from the consultation, even if no agenda is at play, but it might not have the insight into lived experience to understand what the most important points to report are. We would like to see direct consultation.

I will leave it to Ms Coates and Ms McDonagh to speak to the experiences of women with intellectual disabilities, given they have much greater insight and experience on that.

As for our members or others coming to us and whether we pass them on, although this is probably not the answer the Deputy is looking for, it depends on the situation. The National Advocacy Service provides fantastic support for what it does. If someone is looking for practical support and advice, it will depend on what they are looking for. It might be an issue for the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, or the National Advocacy Service when it comes to self-advocacy. It is highly individualised. People have different needs and DPOs are best placed to support them with that. That includes support needs but also confidence-building in respect of that one-to-one relationship and peer mentorship. I would never have got into advocacy if I had not happened to fall in with a bunch of fantastic disability advocates. For most people I know, the best and most meaningful route to advocacy and to building confidence in one's own voice has been through other disabled people, and there really is no replacement for that. We need capacity-building and access to training courses, but what we need most is access to our own communities and to be able to speak freely with one another in an unmediated space.