Mr. Matt McCann:

I can speak from my experience. When I was growing up, I was supported by Enable Ireland. However, its remit from its perspective was to get me walking independently. It was very much from a physio and occupational therapy perspective. Now, Enable Ireland and some DPOs are starting to move in the direction of looking at a more holistic view of what a person wants to be or what they want to grow up to be. I did not have that experience. I had great physio and occupational therapy experiences but I did not have any support with regard to whether I wanted to go to college and what that would be like and all that sort of stuff. It was early days for that. Ireland does not really have that specific DPO that is focused in on adult life, for example, whether people want to go into self-employment or start their own business.

On Mr. Hennessy’s point, there are organisations that will support employers employing people with disabilities. However, as a model to follow, ONCE in Spain has a massive budget to be able to encompass the entire life story of someone with a disability. If you want to start a business, you go to ONCE. If you want to get support from your local politician, you go to ONCE. It has become an advocacy group that has the budget and the support from the government to be able to bring people along that journey. Spain also has organisations such as PREDIF that focus in on the life journey of the person. Again, from my own experience growing up in the mid-1990s, that is not where we were. It is only in the past couple of years that I have seen movement begin towards that. We need that overall organisation to be able to have the expertise in-house as well as have experts come in who are not just trained but also have lived experience and are able to talk and guide people through that journey.