Ms Fiona O'Donovan:

I will elaborate on what Dr. McCarthy has set out. We made a submission on the Revised Estimates for 2019.

We note in our submission that appendix 10 lists the various indicators thematically. There are nine themes. Disability now has its own theme since the budget announcement last year. Theme No. 2 is listed as Ensure People with Disabilities have Equal Opportunities and Supports.

Let us start by saying there are very encouraging indicators within that. In particular we note the moves to focus on community-based supports. Indicators for health, for example, focus on community-based supports. One of the indicators is the number of personal assistant hours provided to people with a physical disability, a sensory disability or both. Others focus on putting people with a disability into the community. That is significant move in the right direction and very much in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Our concern is that the indicators do not measure what needs to be measured. They measure the low-hanging fruit. We will not get the outcomes we are aiming to secure.

One example of this is the measurement of personal assistance hours. Personal assistance services are a fundamental support, not just to get people up out of bed but to get them out into their communities and enable them to participate in society through employment, education, sports, cultural activities etc. Measuring the number of hours allocated overall fails to go into the detail. We need to measure the number of people getting those hours and the number of hours allocated per person. Are people allocated a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours at night? That basically serves to get someone out of bed and put them back into bed, with no assistance in getting out and living life. That is what we mean by saying that we need to go further and really measure the core concerns. Moreover, we must look at the number of people who are not getting those hours. Is there a waiting list? Do we even know what the unmet need is? Are we measuring things correctly? There is conflation of and an overlap between home care services and personal assistance services. Home care is basic support with getting up and getting ready for the day. Personal assistance is aimed at moving out into the community. We encourage the Government to use more in-depth indicators that really get down to the kernel issue.

I will skirt over another example, which pertains to housing. There are only two indicators that concern housing. One concerns special needs units and another concerns the availability of grants. People with disabilities are one of the largest groups of people who qualify for social housing need in annual social housing needs assessments. Are we counting the number of social housing units allocated to people with disabilities per year? That would be a useful indicator. We must drill down into the detail a lot more to really assess the impact.

Moving on from that, we note that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities encourages disability-specific measures, such as theme No. 2, which target the very particular situation for people with disabilities. However, we also need to see mainstreaming. That means that we should be able to see disability considered as a thread throughout all of these initiatives. Theme No. 6 is Equality to Access to Housing. We would ask if disability considerations are evidenced within that theme and throughout all the different themes. An example from last year's budget was the Government's announcement of a tax incentive for repair works. We do not know if that tax incentive is available for improvements pertaining to accessibility. We are not sure what is meant by improvements and we posed a question to the Minister. To my knowledge we have not yet received a definitive answer. That is what we mean when we talk about mainstreaming as a part of budget proofing. I will leave it there and Ms O'Donnell will take over.