Nem Kearns:

Most of my comments have been covered but I will touch on a couple of points. The Irish figure for disability in our census data is 13.5%, which is far below the EU average. In Northern Ireland, it is 21.7%, and it is difficult to see any significant social factors to account for that difference, except for gaps in data collection.

Disabled Women Ireland held a series of consultations on the UNCRPD to inform the DPO Network shadow report. In the weeks coming up to it, our inbox and my phone were blown up by people calling because, due to the language we used to invite participants, they had registered and then panicked because they did not know if they were allowed to identify or if they counted as disabled. Every person I spoke to did count, but none would have filled out the census or be captured in any other system as disabled because the definitions used did not reflect their lives and because of the confusion we have socially in the context of what counts and does not count as disabled.

I have a lifelong disability that no longer counts as such under any Irish regulations after the age of 18. Moreover, although I am disabled in six ways, I have never qualified for any State support. We are missing crucial data. We have to address this both ways, taking account of the factors Ms Hassett was speaking to and the general misconception and lack of understanding, even among disabled people, of who counts and whom we are counting.

I am delighted to hear the CSO will adapt the web accessibility to make its data, and I hope also the statistics gathered from the census, accessible. It would be great to clarify whether that will be retrospective in any way. The 2011 census results are accessible to screen reader users, but the 2016 results are not. People working in our organisation who use screen readers cannot access those data or do their jobs, so it would be great to make the data from at least the last couple of censuses accessible in order that we can track trends over time and compare data in our work.