Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I just have one question. Many of my questions have already been answered in the opening statements by the representatives. I was concerned when the basic income was brought in that there would be these side consequences where people would potentially lose other supports. Ms Conway is right to highlight that we have perhaps missed the boat. While it is better to pre-empt these things or not do them in the first place, hopefully we might find a way forward. I am concerned when the witnesses say they do not think the research will include the disability allowance. That might be something for us as a committee to be aware of.

In many areas of the arts there is the issue of equality, diversity and inclusion, EDI, which is an enormously broad area. Of course, it is. I was an equality officer for a trade union once, and I nearly collapsed under the weight of it. Our guests have said that disability officers should have a very tight focus. Is that where there needs to be a slight unpicking? If everywhere has an EDI or belonging focus, it puts an enormous amount into some very broad areas. The flip-side is that if you start focusing in, you will lose the intersectionality. I do not know that we are getting the intersectionality anyway under these very broad EDI categories. All of us have filled out arts forms which are basically trying to figure out how many disabled people there are, or how many people of a certain category there are. They ask a million different questions in a million different ways, without being so blunt. Many of those arts forms are basically asking us what we are doing to tick the EDI requirements box. Is there a need to start to separate and delve down into this to give that space to various elements of EDI? We are speaking today about disability in particular. I am pre-empting the answer. I am worried that if we do not look at this in depth, we will continue with an EDI that is slightly about ticking boxes, just because the area is so enormous. It is a really broad category that takes in everything. People may ask whether we should go into this, that and the other and take in minutiae. However, if we do not do it, we might not get this right. I would be interested in hearing the representatives' thoughts on that.