Professor Tom Cooney:

It is good to see the Senator. He has been kind to speak on my course for the past number of years. On the course, we have two types of guest speaker. One is an expert in a particular area and the other is a role model. The role models have been incredibly powerful in making change. People keep referencing how they can now see a pathway because the role model has talked about their experiences. Mr. McCann and Mr. Hennessy have spoken on the course.

On who could do what, if we go back to Enterprise Ireland and the women's entrepreneurship, what happened? There is a single webpage and a single person championing it - that was the resourcing. They then put in some dedicated programmes that targeted women entrepreneurs only. Regarding getting started, it can be just one webpage on thelocalenterprise.iewebsite listing the tailored supports available but also a single person who would champion that within the system and go to the local enterprise offices, LEOs, ask what they are doing, go to the website and ask whether it is accessible for everyone, and come to us and the advocacy organisations and ask what we are doing to support people with a disability. It would be the most obvious location to put a support system or a central point of reference to support people with a disability. It does not take a whole lot of money to make that happen.

Regarding policy, we have three choices. I have been looking at policies in other countries. Basically, the OECD would argue that Ireland needs an inclusive entrepreneurship policy; not just one for people with disability, but one that would also address immigrants, seniors, marginalised youth, ex-offenders, Travellers and other marginalised and disadvantaged communities. An inclusive entrepreneurship strategy by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is one solution. A second option is what we are kind of currently doing, which is within the national disability strategy, there would be something on self-employment as a target. We have done that for the previous two plans and, as I said earlier, out of five actions, only two have been completed, one of which happened because of the course. If we are going to have actions, let us action them. The third option would be the Finnish model, which has no strategy, but basically states that within everything they do, they have to be inclusive of people with disability. Self-employment is not a strategy but transportation and all the other strategies or policies that they design have to be inclusive of everyone and, therefore, there is no need for a tailored or dedicated strategy for people with a disability in terms of self-employment. With respect to policy, those are our three options. However, at the moment, we do not have the first, the third is a vision I cannot see us getting to anytime soon and the second, the national disability strategy, will only work if we action what we write down on paper, and the LEOs can lead on this.