Ms Joan O'Donnell:

I want to come back to Deputy Lahart's point about technology not just in work but in the home. We very much agree that we need to look at this in Ireland. Ireland's approach to, and service provision for, assistive technology to support people with disabilities of whatever age, and older people, to live independently, to access work and education, lags way behind other countries such as the UK, Australia, Denmark and others. We are doing quite poorly, by international comparisons, in that regard. The DFI and Enable Ireland have been doing much work under the banner of FreedomTech to model an appropriate service and complete ecosystem of supports for people to live independently. It would help to deal with transitions from school to work because, at the moment, for example, if one has technology supports while at school, one cannot take that technology into the workplace. The grants available and overall access are quite poor. Trying to get hold of the technology for a smart home to be able to live independently is also quite difficult.

In 2017, we published a discussion paper with almost the entire disability sector expressing what we would like. I can make that available to the committee. We have also costed a pilot to roll out an assistive technology passport which would be the one record of a person's assistive technology needs, their support and training needs around it and so on. That passport would be owned by the people themselves. We would put them at the centre of their own expertise for their technology needs, which is exactly what the NDA is suggesting. We costed that pilot project at €1.5 million, which I am also happy to share with the committee. We are very keen that that will be given consideration in budgetary oversight to ensure that people can live independently and be in charge of their own lives.

It is particularly critical for work. The Department of Justice and Equality is due to roll out one of the Make Work Pay recommendations which, as I mentioned previously, is about ensuring that we have the grant schemes to support people in work but the work on that has not commenced yet. It has a budgetary implication and we are keen to see that commenced. I am definitely with the Deputy on wanting to see the technology progressed.