Dr. Robert Sinnott:

I thank Deputy Ellis for the questions. Things have not been disability-proofed unless the DPOs have been approached. No party here has approached the DPOs with regard to disability-proofing. None, and not us anyway. Nothing has been disability-proofed. Absolutely not. With regard to the DPCN, this is the mindset and the culture that has to be considered. Article 4.3 is not just part of the CRPD. Article 4.3 is at the heart of the CRPD. There is no CRPD without Article 4.3. We are the start. We are the alpha and the omega of the CRPD. If it is about disability-proofing, that is us. That is what we are here for.

We are trying to provide the service yet nobody is coming to us. People are just ignoring us. With regard to the DPCN, it would be great to have a one-stop shop in order for the State to box-tick, but the DPCN is a dog's dinner because of the way it was set up.

This can be seen in the Department of Justice's report of March 2020, the national disability inclusion strategy, NDIS, interim report, which actually misquotes Article 4.3. It states people with disabilities shall be closely consulted and actively involved in the implementation of the UNCRPD but it cuts out the key four words at the end, "through their representative organizations". Therefore, the State itself was totally engaged in misrepresentation of what the UNCRPD states. I am not saying it was deliberate misrepresentation but it absolutely was misrepresentation. The DPCN is a dog's dinner because it threw all the disability actors together; it needs to separate DPOs. First, if the DPCN is to work, it has to be DPO only, as under paragraph 49. There has to be a space. Second, the DPCN could not be expected to deal with each body. There are 650 public bodies. How much processing power would this involve? When I refer to the DPCN, I mean no other organisation can be representative. As long as there is a non-DPO in the DPCN, it cannot be representative. To be realistic, all the DPCN could possibly be good for is having the high-level meeting with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, because that is all that such a structure would be resourced to do. Otherwise, one would be talking about a massive Civil Service in its own right to consult all the various public bodies etc.

We are also very big on bilateral meetings. There are certain things that affect visually impaired people especially, including in respect of types of braille, and they get marginalised in wider meetings. These things have to happen on multiple levels. Every level and branch of government should have separate DPO consultation. Again, I am referring to paragraph 49 of general comment 7.