Ms Paula Soraghan:

I will come on that. I thank the Senator for her question. As my colleague Mr. Kearns mentioned in the opening statement, disability equality training is key. Great work is being done in some diversity, inclusion and equality initiatives. As disabled people are unfortunately not being genuinely included in this instance, they are not being given genuine career opportunities, so there is a lot of tokenism. There is still very much an emphasis on disability awareness training, which is not sufficient, to be honest. It is not good enough because the focus is solely on the idea of the impairment as a person's disability. It means that they do not get to see the person as a whole individual. They are just seeing their impairment and their limitations. There is therefore tokenism.

Although some great work is being done, the EDI initiatives could certainly be improved. That is where engagement with DPOs locally and nationally would really help and would really improve it. It would also then mean that there would hopefully be a commitment going forward for actual tangible change. There would be disability equality training delivered by a disabled person who understands what the social model of disability is and why that is so important for them. Slowly but surely, it would start to move away from the prevalent tendency in society to see disability as a personal problem or deficit and we would start to understand it more widely as a political issue. It is something that is done to somebody with an impairment, it is not something that somebody has.