David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I welcome our guests and thank them for their presentations, which were a breath of fresh air. In order to be in line with everybody else who spoke this morning, I am a very middle-aged - probably old aged at this stage - balding, grey-haired man who wears glasses for reading and has hearing aids. There are challenges when you get a bit older. To be clear and up-front from the start, I also want to state that I am on the board of the Open Doors Initiative. It is a terrific organisation that has gone from strength to strength under the leadership of Ms McDonagh and the team.

I thank the witnesses from the NCBI for their submission. There is a lot there to take in and it packed a lot into two pages. Ms McGriele said 75% of blind or visually impaired people are not active in the labour market. I agree with her when she says that this is too much untapped potential. Could she put figures on that for us? Roughly how many people are involved?