Dr. James Casey:

There were many questions and they were good. I will probably make a hames of answering them but I will try anyway.

One point we are here to talk about today is that there needs to be a mechanism to consult with the Government DPOs. There already is an organisation for service providers but not for DPOs. It needs to be established. I am aware that the new Department is doing something on that but let us open it up and have DPOs at the heart instead of saying, "Here, this is for you now."

With regard to the upcoming budget, we believe there should be a ten-year budget for disability. There should be a specific focus on disability, with a multi-annual dimension. There also should be a disability-strategy focus on the UNCRPD and disability and how the arrangement works. With regard to what can be done over ten years in this regard, there are four stages. There should be a register of DPOs; there has to be one. There is a lot of gaslighting – I love that word – going on at the moment. Others talked about advocacy groups and all this kind of carry-on. Cut it out. It is not hard to see where it is coming from. We do not have tobacco companies speaking for non-smokers, yet the position on disability is regarded as acceptable. That is the truth. We need a register.

We need to have a strategy on mainstreaming disability, having real inclusion and not just bringing us in for photoshoots. It is a question of the Government determining how to do that.

There needs to be a commitment to retrofitting the articles under the UNCRPD retrofitting legislation. A perfect example is the Disability Act 2005, in which disability is defined as a wholly functional limitation. That is not reflective of modern European countries; it is outdated beyond doubt. I realise we have very strong anti-discrimination legislation but it is not what I envisage. I am not a legislator and might be making claims, but I believe there needs to be retrofitting to greater reflect our position as a modern, social democratic country. Otherwise, we are standing on very thin ice. There needs to be service provision. I am referring to what is compliant under comment 4. There are several issues in this regard.

To return to the issue of DPO regulations, the NDA has produced a paper and has investigated the attributes of DPOs using Australia and New Zealand. They are quite good. We should use these because we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We should just build on this. The criteria are very good.