Mr. Michael Gaffey:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee and I very much welcome the opportunity to meet with them. As Mr. Roughneen has just said, an estimated 15% to 16% of the world’s population lives with disability and some 80% of this number live in developing countries and in areas with high risks of natural disasters, armed conflicts and emergencies. The proportion of people living below the poverty line is higher amongst people with disabilities than people without disabilities and is, in fact, double in some countries. Poverty and conflict impact people with disabilities to a greater degree than persons without a disability. Disability significantly limits a person's agency to participate in society and this is particularly the case in low income settings.

As the committee is aware, Ireland ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, in March 2018, as a core element of our commitment to promoting and protecting the human rights of persons with disabilities. Promoting and protecting human rights is a key foreign policy priority for Ireland and, therefore, our commitment to the convention extends beyond our domestic commitment to all of our international engagement including championing the rights of persons with disabilities in international development cooperation.

Articles 11 and 32 of the convention are specific references to development co-operation and humanitarian action. We recognise, however, that all articles of the convention are relevant for disability inclusion in development co-operation and humanitarian action. Disability inclusion is not an optional extra. Sustainable Development Goals and Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015, is focused on commitments to end poverty, reduce inequality and leave no one behind. The SDGs cannot be achieved in full without including people with disabilities. The SDGs relating to education, growth and employment, inequality, accessibility of human settlements, as well as data collection and monitoring of the implementation of the goals, all specifically require attention to disability. Prioritising people with disabilities is central to delivery on Ireland’s pledge to reach the "‘furthest behind first", a core principle of Ireland’s international development policy, A Better World. A Better World specifically notes a “particular focus on improved outcomes for women and girls, minorities and the inclusion of people with disabilities”. The core principle of reaching the "furthest behind first" is Ireland’s response to the promise of the SDGs to leave no one behind but this focus is not new to us. The ethos of reaching those most marginalised and poorest is embedded in our aid programme since its foundation just 50 years ago.

Our policy priorities and our current pledge to reach the furthest behind are informed by evidence and learning that comes from our international engagements and experience. Probably the most important source for us is our direct engagement with the communities and people we support in partnerships through our embassy network in Sub-Saharan Africa and also in Vietnam. We know first-hand how people with disabilities are excluded from development assistance and have less access to basic services.

I accompanied the Tánaiste on his visit in July to Mozambique, home to one of Ireland’s bilateral development programmes; in fact, it is our second largest bilateral development programme. We saw the slow but steady progress being made to address poverty in all its dimensions there. We also got a better understanding of the challenges of marginalisation and exclusion. Our embassy teams are continuously exploring and testing initiatives to address this challenge. A good example to illustrate this is in the context of the large UN-led humanitarian assistance operation to help more than 1 million displaced persons from the Cabo Delgado conflict in the north of Mozambique. Through our embassy in Mozambique, Ireland is funding a project to help UN agencies identify and more accurately prioritise assistance to the most vulnerable among the displaced population. This includes a specific focus on persons with disabilities who are receiving significantly less benefit from the humanitarian response. We believe that a catalytic initiative like this, in the margins of a large humanitarian operation, is exactly the type of measure we aim and need to do more of.

We also know that the participation of people with disabilities is an important and necessary requirement for economic and social life and to prosper. It is very clear to us that taking a rights-based approach to disability inclusion and confronting and overcoming the marginalisation of people with disabilities has a transformative effect on society as a whole. Women with disabilities face higher personal risk and are twice as likely to experience gender-based violence compared to their peers without disabilities. Only around 20% of women with disabilities in low-income countries are employed compared with 58% of men with disabilities. Gender equality is and has been for many years a core priority for Ireland’s international development co-operation. Ensuring we have a gendered approach to our disability inclusion work is critical.

Recently, the Department of Foreign Affairs undertook a mapping of all programmes and projects that support disability inclusive development. The aim was to understand fully the extent of what we are doing across the programme on disability and to identify gaps and improve our focus. The mapping was based on the disability inclusion tracking tool developed by the OECD development assistance committee that sets standards for the quality of international development co-operation spending, known as ODA.

The mapping demonstrated that disability inclusion work is evident across Ireland’s programme in more than 51 countries, channelled mostly through UN agencies and NGOs. It illustrated examples of good practice. For instance, in social protection programmes that we support in Tanzania and Malawi, Ireland advocates for and supports measures to ensure that provision of these social protection services targets people with disabilities. In Vietnam, our embassy supports a Vietnamese NGO to increase disabled persons’ participation in income generating and socioeconomic projects. In Ethiopia, our embassy has a partnership with the Ethiopian Centre for Disability and Development, contributing to disability mainstreaming in two states. In Tanzania, Ireland has supported the Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania centre for many years. Our support enables provision of specialised surgical and rehabilitation services for people with disabilities and, in fact, 6% of the centre’s staff are themselves living with disabilities.

More generally, the mapping exercise found that in 2021, 24% of Ireland’s ODA was disability-inclusive. We are currently exploring how we increase this percentage, which is important work. Our starting point is to improve our monitoring systems and to include systematic use of this OECD tracking instrument. We are currently rolling out guidance and training to our teams to appraise and improve all programmes for disability inclusion. For this, we will develop guidance on a more standardised use of monitoring tools. More accurately measuring disability inclusion in our programme is critical to allow us to identify gaps and opportunities. In this way we can effectively challenge ourselves and our partners, including UN agencies and NGOs, to redouble efforts to achieve the commitments we make on disability inclusion.

Ireland’s international development policy, A Better World, reaffirms the commitment to improving our disability inclusion work and we are now acting on that. Adopting a more deliberate and system-wide approach using the OECD methodology will allow us to consolidate and strengthen our impact. This is the best internationally recognised means to enhance disability inclusion in humanitarian action and development co-operation and it is the means through which we will continue to deliver on our own policy commitments, and through that, on UNCRPD, and make a meaningful contribution to Agenda 2030. I thank the Cathaoirleach very much.