Mr. Peter Kearns:

The Disabled Persons Organisation, DPO, Network, welcomes the opportunity to be here today. The DPO Network is an alliance of disabled people and their organisations; there are five DPOs in Ireland, which have joined together as they have a common interest in the implementation of the UNCRPD in Ireland. The five DPO member organisations of the DPO Network are AsIAm, Ireland's national autism advocacy organisation; Disabled Women Ireland, DWI, Independent Living Movement Ireland, ILMI, which I work with and am a member of; Irish Deaf Society, IDS; and the National Platform of Self Advocates, which Mr. McGrath is involved with. The DPO Network is committed to the human rights and social model of disability, which states that the exclusion, inequality and discrimination disabled people experience is not the consequence of our impairments but a result of the economic, cultural, social and political barriers which persist in society. All of our work is led and informed by the active participation of disabled people based on their lived experience.

Given the broad base of the members of the network, it gives a unique space for a genuinely cross-impairment analysis of the issues faced by disabled people and provides a space for networking between the organisations. I am going to talk about DPOs and the social model of disability. DPOs work from an explicitly human rights and equality approach to build a more inclusive society. We are informed by the social model of disability and, therefore, in all our documentation and discussions we always use the term “disabled people” to reflect the values of equality and empowerment which are at the core of the DPO network.

The role of DPOs includes working with policymakers, legislators and statutory bodies to develop policies and campaigns based on disabled people's lived experiences and to remove barriers that restrict life choices for disabled people. When barriers are removed, disabled people can be independent and equal in society, with choice and control over their own lives. Barriers are not just physical. Attitudes found in society, based on prejudice or stereotypes, also called disablism, or outdated ideas or perceptions around disability also disable people from having equal opportunities to be part of society. Disabled people developed the social model of disability because the traditional medical model did not explain their personal experience of disability or help to develop more inclusive ways of living.

DPOs are civil society organisations of disabled people, as distinct from disability service providers, DSPs, and charities for clients and service users. Disability service providers, most of whom are funded at least in part by the State, are also resourced by boards and staff who are mainly non-disabled people. The DPO network recognises that this committee and other State agencies are beginning to prioritise the primacy of DPOs as per Article 4.3 and General Comment 7 of the UNCRPD. This recognition of the role of DPOs in the development of policy and direct consultation is welcomed. However, the DPO network is concerned that with the increased awareness of the role of DPOs, without a real plan for how our development is to be supported, we will either be unable to participate in the representative and consultative spaces or that calls for DPO involvement could result in tokenistic participation.

On that basis, the DPO network would like to raise the follow observations of how DPOs should be resourced locally and nationally to inform the development of policies to implement the UNCRPD. There is a need to invest in the development of DPOs. To speak about the participation of DPOs in local structures such as PPNs, we first must recognise that there has been an historic lack of investment to build collective rights-based spaces for disabled people in Ireland. Due to the dominance of disability service providers and the disability industry in Ireland, disabled people and DPOs have not directly benefited from any investment in community development, social inclusion, or collective approaches. This has had a serious impact on disabled peoples' voices being heard in policy, local area coordination, public participation networks and community development, locally and nationally. Hopefully, with the increased recognition of the primary role of DPOs in the UNCRPD, we will see a systemic shift towards investment in DPOs to organise collectively to bring about a more inclusive society.

A mechanism of DPO prioritisation needs to be concretely identified and put in place. As the Disability Participation and Consultation Network has itself highlighted, a consultative body or forum without this mechanism cannot fulfil the consultation requirements of the UNCRPD. A method of identifying bona fide DPOs needs to be established in partnership with existing DPOs. One example of this is the checklist developed by the DPO Coalition of New Zealand. The criteria required to be recognised as a DPO need to be available and accessible to groups representing disabled people, and support needs to be available to enable appropriate groups to meet any criteria additional to those outlined under General Comment 7. For example, should it be necessary for an organisation to have terms of reference or a constitution, or to register with a body such as the Companies Registration Office to secure recognition as a DPO, advice and practical support should be available for this? Disabled people have, as a community, significantly decreased access to financial and educational resources and many DPOs and local disabled person's groups are run on an entirely voluntary basis. Navigating criteria such as these may fall outside their skill set without support to build these skills being made available. While it is important to have a rigorous and transparent methods of identifying DPOs and distinguishing them from all other types of organisations, it is important that all genuinely self-representative groups advocating on behalf of their membership are adequately supported to do so. We have a relatively sparse and new DPO landscape in Ireland, and investment in empowering this sector to grow is imperative to advance the UNCRPD on both a local and national level.

Currently, PPNs require that an organisation must either operate solely within a local authority area, or that it has a specific local branch representing the area, distinct from its national organisation, to participate. Not only does this not reflect the ways in which many DPOs are organised, due, in part, to insufficient resources to set up distinct local branches at a county level, but information on what constitutes a local branch is difficult to obtain. PPNs have, to date, not been set up or developed with the goal of enabling the equal participation of disabled people. Before PPNs can be considered as appropriate fora for DPO consultation, they must, in addition to adopting the distinction mechanism mentioned earlier, be reviewed to ensure that their processes and meetings, including remote access options and physical locations, are fully accessible to all disabled people who wish to participate in them. This is likely to entail redesigning aspects of their current operating methods and ways of distributing information relating to the PPNs work. This review needs to be carried out in partnership with DPOs and local disabled people.

Implementation of the UNCRPD will require the full and active participation of disabled people in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies to promote effective social inclusion. The UNCRPD is not solely about policies and frameworks relating to disabled people’s lives. It is ultimately about ensuring that disabled people and their needs are given due regard in all aspects of public, cultural,economic, civic, and political life in Ireland. I will hand over to Mr. Joe McGrath who will talk about the lack of access to community supports, in line with the UNCRPD, if living in congregated settings or in the community.