Ms Jeanne McDonagh:

It is also about the way we all look at the world. This is me sort of grandstanding. We work with the Crann centre in Cork. It is a remote working centre that was built fully accessible for people with all disabilities. It has a quiet room, raisable desks and space. That thinking was present from the start, when they started raising funds and building it. Many of the other remote working centres are not accessible. It is about having a mindset of looking at the built environment and wider society through a more inclusive lens and deciding that, if a website is being built, maybe someone who knows how to make it accessible from the get-go should be brought in. There is no point in doing the retrofitting. We all know it costs more and is more difficult. People shy away from it. We need to do this from the beginning. New houses are being built but how many of them will be built for people with disabilities? I bet that is not even in the thinking at the moment, although I hope I am wrong in that regard. There is a need to come at everything on which we are working, including employment, from the lens of making it accessible. People with disabilities should not be considered as people who will cause trouble, be a drag or a problem or a drain on resources but, rather, as employees who needs a step up to be equitable with other employees. They should be treated like all other employees are treated, as people who bring something to the organisation. It is about more than the nuts and bolts of tools and equipment; it is about how we look at that and people with disabilities.