Dr. Gerald Craddock:

I thank the Deputy for the question. In general, yes. It comes back to education and organisations like AsIAm and others creating awareness of the issues. We come in with independent advice to present evidence that we have looked at international best practice and advise what should be pursued or advanced through legislation or new regulation. One of the issues brought up in the previous question was Part M. We have been talking to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage about revising Part M because it is about visitable housing.

One area we have been heavily involved in over the past 18 months is Changing Places toilets being added to the revised Part M. We are developing national guidance to align with that new regulation regarding Changing Places toilets. The other area is working with the National Standards Authority of Ireland on universal design dwellings for homes and apartments. That is to advance the thinking and understanding about better designed homes that we would see informing the revision of Part M. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is sitting on that working group, with which we had another meeting yesterday afternoon. It is actively involved in that working group.

If we are talking about the built environment, the answer is, "Yes." We are working with professional bodies like the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland. Our next-door neighbours are Engineers Ireland. In the past couple of weeks we have sat, with our fellow attendees at this committee, on programmatic reviews on engineers and what is happening on engineering courses. We have now been able to look at the accreditation for chartered engineers. Universal design is now a key requirement for a chartered engineer. Over the next couple of months, we will be developing further criteria with Engineers Ireland and what that means for student attributes.