Ms Gillian Kearns:

I will address the question on sufficient supports. Something that we are seeing in education is that there is much confusion about the idea of reasonable accommodations. That term is very problematic. Who gets to decide what is reasonable? They are access needs and access rights and they are being denied to people on a regular basis. One of the things that is coming up more and more, and on which more and more people are getting in contact with us, particularly our neurodivergent disabled people, is the difficulty with placement. This will obviously have the gendered aspect because, as I mentioned, these are mostly in courses that have predominantly female students, such as teaching, social care and these kinds of roles. What is happening is when people go on placement is nobody is taking responsibility for the idea of reasonable accommodations. The workplace is saying they are not working there so it is not its responsibility and the college is saying the students are not there so it is not its responsibility. This is leading to and has led to people having to drop out of courses, not being able to complete courses or having to go through a long and arduous appeals process where they get no support.

This happens in employment as well. There is very little access if you are discriminated against on the basis of disability. Free legal aid is overwhelmed and is not able to take on these cases. IHREC used to give individual support. It no longer does. The NDA does not get involved in employment law and disability at all. When people are discriminated against, they are finding it extraordinarily difficult to get any support or help. It is extortionately expensive to find somebody who is specialised or well versed in disability law and employment law. It cost one person €500 just to talk to somebody.