Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are all very welcome. Something that comes across every week when people with lived experience and groups appear before the committee is that there is an innate lack of ambition by Departments for people with disabilities. We so often see barriers and a lack of integration. We see so many issues. That is not to say great work is not being done. I am saying that perhaps the emphasis is in the wrong areas. On that note, I want to ask each Department how it objectively analyses its performance with regard to implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD? As officials, how do the witnesses rank or rate themselves? How do they go through the actual document to see how we create a more equitable society as opposed to a more equal one? Can they highlight successes? I know there are good examples in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for sure because accessibility grants for tractors are available to people. There is clearly ambition in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and I see that.

Have any of the officials partaken in disability equity training? Have they got their staff - the people who are employed by the State to create policy - to partake in training? We are talking about how the officials are here to implement policy. However, they write the policy. It is for us to scrutinise that policy but the officials in the Departments write and drive the policy internally from their Departments. We all have a very important role. We cannot pass it on from one to another. Have the people who are supposed to be writing policy for disability inclusion or inclusion in general partaken in any disability equity training or accessibility training? Is there any awareness with regard to that lived experience or do we just farm it out to the different groups and wait for report analysis? I have so many questions but we will go through those first.