Dr. Aideen Hartney:

The engagement with local authorities is quite variable. There are 31 of them, so there is a fair bit of variation. Sometimes somebody proactive within a local authority will approach us. It is absolutely within our remit to give advice and guidance to local authorities. We very much recognise that they are at the front line. When local area development plans are in development, we make submissions on what we feel should be picked up on. In some cases, local authorities have been very proactive in that regard.

A good example of that is a walkability audit we tested in County Clare. By having the audit tool and the result that came out of that in the town of Kilrush, the county council there apparently made funding available to address some of the issues identified during that audit. People with disabilities participated, as did those using buggies and older people, in finding out just how walkable the town in question was and huge improvements have been made as a result. That is an example of where the mix of our guidance and toolkits comes into a local area where there is a degree of proactivity.

One of the things we said during our time to assess progress under the NDIS was that local authorities were not represented at that steering group table to the necessary extent. That was something the chair of that group, Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, was very keen to address but, unfortunately, the strategy expired before we had a chance to do so. A couple of actions within that strategy designated local authorities as the responsible bodies for delivery. Those were areas where we did not get as much update as would have been liked. Certainly, an area for attention in the development of a new strategy is how local actors integrate with national actors and everybody is on the same page. That is a little bit about the picture.

On identifying improvements, one example is in our annual report on Part 5 of the Disability Act. We include examples of good practice where somebody took our advice in the past and how it has represented a change in their numbers year on year. Indeed, comparative figures can be looked at for each year because that is an annual report. That is quite interesting. By and large, Departments are in compliance with that part of the Act. The challenges are with public bodies at agency level. For some of them, it can be more challenging. I will give another example we had. When we published our first report on the web accessibility directive, which is a directive from Europe, it showed poor performance in certain sectors. For example, some local authorities, to go back to that, were not doing as well as they should. By presenting those results and, again, engaging and presenting guidance on how to improve, when we came to do the 2022 report catch-up, we saw huge differences. Some of them had really raised their game, including, I think, Mayo County Council, which stands out in my mind. The reports are in the public domain on our website so that can be checked out. There was a little competition between local authorities in that they were all trying to improve.