Mr. Damien Walsh:

I am sure Lianne and John want to come in because I do not want to hog it. DPOs are for and by disabled people. For example in ILMI, all the members are disabled, all the board members are disabled and 90% of the staff are disabled. Therefore, it is owned and controlled by disabled people. The local DPOs operate on a similar basis. We have established DPOs in Meath, which the Minister, Deputy McEntee, kindly launched. I will be interested to talk to Deputy Toole about the parents forum and how that might link into Meath DPO in the future. There are DPOs in Donegal, Cork and Wexford. Leitrim will happen. Sligo is very well established and so forth. They will interact with the public participation networks and the local community development committees. They will nominate the representatives to sit on them and say what they think should change. It embeds disabled people in the local policymaking arena as citizens who have a collective sense. It is not dissimilar from other community development organisations which have been very successful in the past.

Service providers provide services. The Health Act mandates section 38 and section 39 organisations to provide services in different areas, including for disabled people. However, disabled people do not own those and do not control them. Last year, we published a document entitled A Manifesto for Change. We feel that under the public sector duties of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, because the State is funding section 38 and section 39 organisations, they have an onus to produce a human rights and equality statement. They should be putting measures in place to employ disabled people much as the State does with the Disability Act. However, they should really be working with DPOs to ensure that the governance of those services is managed by disabled people.

We are looking to build partnerships with some very large and very small organisations. Without question they are delivering vital services. That is their mandate and they should continue to do that. However, where they are providing a service, they should work with DPOs to ensure those services are managed and controlled. When talking about effectiveness, transparency and accountability, ultimately the large service providers should be accountable to disabled people themselves. They then need to establish those strategies for recruitment. The budget has almost crept up to €3 billion per annum. We are talking about the employment of disabled people. There could be a substantial driver of change there. Not every disabled person will want to work in disability services. However, we need to kick start that to address the chronic under employment of disabled people in Irish society.

Service providers provide the services and many of them are very well established. However, it is very clear under the UNCRPD that they do not have a role around that collective representation to say what disabled people want because they do not have that mandate. That is the role of DPOs. In a lot of instances at local level and national level, we work quite closely with disability services because when they are effective and accountable to disabled people, they will give disabled people greater control and choice to participate in society as equals, which is fundamental to realising CRPD.