Ms Sin?ad Gibney:

Again, Dr. Conaty and Dr. McDonagh picked up on much of what I was going to say. I agree on the concept of universal design always being an investment for the longer term when we approach anything. One area that might be interesting to examine is the corporate sector. I used to work in the tech sector and when companies in that sector look at the localisation of products, they do not look at just, for example, the neighbouring market, which might naturally be the next place to go. They map out all the markets where they might go and they pick the ones that have the most diversity and complex needs, such as languages that might be written differently, where there is less Internet penetration and so on. That means they build a model for the most complex needs, which will then meet the needs of everybody as they advance. It requires a much heavier investment at the outset but it pays off in the long run. That could be an interesting place to look at universal design. It is not referred to by that name in that industry but it is exactly the same concept.

Deputy Flaherty picked up on some of the language in my opening statement, so I wanted to respond to that. It related to the interchange in which I used the terms of the groupings of people with disabilities versus autistic people in my comments. This plays into universal design because many of the benefits being sought for autistic people will benefit the wider disability community. I took a lot of care in trying to get the balance right in my statement between referring to autistic people and to disabled people, because we need to be conscious about suggesting any kind of hierarchy or pitting groups within the disability community against one another. From my understanding, autistic people tend to be proud members of the disabled community, and it is not a reference to being disabled or having a disability that is a problem but rather it is society's understanding of disability as something to be ashamed of. In fact, the disability is the failure of the State and society to provide for those people. That should explain the language in my statement and the nuance in that regard.

On the integration model and how we do it, we have to recognise the incredible volume of work being done by people who want to provide inclusive education services for people within their community. That comes in the shape of SNAs, teachers and education providers in all sorts of different ways. I reiterate the CRPD is a very important handbook for how this is designed. We speak across the range of conventions to which Ireland is a signatory and the CRPD is unique in being a very advanced and clear handbook for the realisation of the rights of people with disabilities. It is important to look at that. I do not have a silver bullet answer on the integration model except to say schools and the education service need to be better resourced to do this, and we need to get to that point where the parallel tracks Ms Jackson mentioned will merge, whereby we will provide for those people who need to have some level of segregation but only towards a model where everything is integrated.