Dr. Martin McMahon:

Similar to us in Trinity College Dublin, St. Angela's also runs a registered nursing course in intellectual disability. That is being led by the programme leader, Ursula Gilrane. The postgraduate in disability studies is being led by Susan Carton. People with intellectual disabilities need to be visible. Historically, we have come from a point where they were marginalised. Specifically, people with an intellectual disability represented only 1.2% of the population in our last census. Even though it is every day as part of our lives, and we undertake work with people with intellectual disabilities and research, it is still a very small segment in society. What we need to do, and what the programme in ATU St. Angela's does, is raise awareness of disability within society. We need to see people with an intellectual disability and disabilities more broadly in mainstream society. By doing that, we can see that people have value and worth, but we need to increase the profile of seeing people with an intellectual disability. That programme in ATU is offered.

Sligo is an interesting area, because proportionally per head of population, there is a high level of disability due to the history of institutions such as Cloonamahon and Cregg House. Then people were put into congregated care from Roscommon, Donegal and Leitrim. Sligo has a high level of disability per head of population in comparison with other counties. That programme is very much about disability studies. I cannot comment specifically on it, but from what I know about that programme, it involves people with disabilities themselves. People with disabilities are delivering some of the content and they are participating. We have to look at the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities within society more broadly. When the broader society sees people with disabilities and their value and their worth, we can progress a bit more. That is what the study does.