Ms Jacqui Browne:

I thank the Chairperson very much. It is great to see so many Deputies and Senators here. The DPO Network welcomes the opportunity to be here. I am the chair of the network and I am joined by my colleague, Ms Lianne Quigley, who is attending in person.

The DPO Network is an alliance of five national disabled persons' organisations in Ireland. They are AsIAm, the national autism advocacy organisation, Disabled Women Ireland, the Independent Living Movement Ireland - members of which are also presenting today - and the Irish Deaf Society. I am joined, as I said, by Ms Quigley who is a representative from there and the DPO Network and the National Platform of Self Advocates. The DPO Network relies on disabled people’s collective lived experience, expertise and analysis to inform our work. We are led and informed by the active input and participation of disabled people in accordance with the UNCRPD and that facilitates cross-impairment analysis of the issues we face as disabled people.

We have been asked to particularly address the question around how DPO Development can be more inclusive to achieve our human rights and meaningful participation for disabled people across all groups, including those with complex impairments. In answering this question, we wish to focus on the words "inclusive" and "meaningful participation", or as we prefer to say, meaningful engagement. What do these terms mean? What do they mean in practice and is there a gap happening? From our perspective, too often only lip service is being paid to participation.

Often this amounts to little more than tokenism and a box-ticking exercise by agencies. We need to change. Change is needed now and, to be fair, we can see this change is beginning to happen in some spaces. We have had very successful engagements and we have worked very well with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Disability Matters. We also have very close engagement and work very successfully with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. We are currently working closely with the Department to co-create the new national disability strategy, which is to be launched later this year.

What we are asking for is that all State Departments, bodies and related services focus on changing their own attitudes, processes and workflows to include universal design, meaningful engagement and co-creation of plans, strategies and policies. This must include DPO participation in the monitoring and evaluation of such strategies and plans. Disabled people must be deeply involved in the implementation of the CRPD in Ireland.

We have a central role to play in the State's implementation of the CRPD in order to advance equality, inclusion and the human rights of disabled people everywhere. We invite members to visit our website to review our recent publication, The Role of Disabled Persons' Organisations (DPOs) in Ireland. It is available at .

Although DPOs have been established in various ways for many years, it is only recently that the State is starting to recognise and understand its responsibility to place us at the centre of policy development and implementation. Currently, many DPOs are not adequately resourced or even resourced at all. We are led by volunteers. We need State support in order to participate in an appropriate way. DPOs need multi-annual funding in order that we can ensure the collective voice of disabled people informs policy development and also to monitor the implementation of the CRPD in Ireland at local and national levels.

To achieve meaningful engagement we have a number of key recommendations, all of which are set out in our DPO network position paper. These are described in more detail in that paper but I will share six of the key positions with the committee. First, we need the establishment of a national register of DPOs, as referred to by Neuro Pride Ireland just before me. We also need an effort to be made on the design and implementation of a framework for co-creation - how we work together to create strategies and frameworks.

There is a need for the recognition of the role of DPOs as the authoritative representative voice of disabled people. While the DPO Network acknowledges that there is a role for disability service providers in the provision of services, they have no mandate whatsoever to speak on behalf of disabled people.

There is also a requirement that systems for structured engagement and consultation entail representation from recognised DPOs and not just individuals. An example of good practice in this area is the national civic forum which has been in operation for a number of years.

As has been referenced before, we also need the provision of adequate, multi-annual core funding to DPOs so that we can effectively engage in policy development, implementation and monitoring of the CRPD. The provision of support to DPOs to develop technical and organisational capacity is essential. This cannot happen on fresh air or just with volunteers.

On behalf of the DPO Network I thank members for their time and interest in this important topic. I look forward to engaging with the committee in the future to ensure ongoing, meaningful engagement with DPOs. We congratulate the committee on hosting today's meeting and wish it all the very best with the event.