Ms Roisin Doherty:

There were the questions on rehabilitative training. I will come second to the issue of vocational training. The Senator mentioned our interaction with public sector duty. From our perspective, our organisation meets it in that from an internal point of view, we have our public sector duty reports and action plans, etc. From the provisions point of view - which we fund, and do not actually provide, as such - we are trying to build a universally designed system. This builds agency for the individual in order that he or she does not have to put his or her hand up as much to get individualised supports. If we wanted to be really successful, we would say that anybody who needs any support would go through a process, we would record it and it would be an achievement that we have supported that person with a disability. However, if we were to have in-built supports, and the Senator mentioned dyslexia, such as through the use of assistive technology, you would not need to put your hand up. You would be able to use that and build it into your system. That is why we are supporting AHEAD to build assistive technologies, which will be in-built into one’s system. The main thing we are trying to work on is building the agency for the individual in order that all our services are inclusively designed. This will mean that a person can be independent as much as possible.

When we were talking with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, we said we have worked with the National Disability Authority, NDA, which did a review of employment matters for persons with disabilities. The recommendation for further education was to build our system inclusively, which would support as many people as possible to be included in that environment. We will have universal design for everybody because everybody will benefit from that particular service. That is why we are supporting various different organisations to build that support. As I mentioned, AHEAD and Dyslexia Ireland will build in those supports. We now have a hub for assistive technology and I recommend that everybody use it because it identifies what supports a person might need. It is not that you need support; it is a matter of how you can do your job more effectively and efficiently by using those resources.

The Senator mentioned the courses. We have looked at the system and we have used the example of the adult literacy service. There are people in the service who may be the same age as I am and who have got supports from the system for the past 20 years but they have not progressed through that. We are trying to stop the flow into that continual service and support people when they are very young.

The Senator mentioned day services. The pilot programme we are working on with the Department of Education will do that. It will identify a person’s post-school transition, which might not be through further education at all. It might be a job, working in a community group, volunteering or working on a hobby because not everybody wants to progress right away into employment. This will give opportunities to people to find out what they want to do. That will change the system, as opposed to trying to address all the issues in the system. Do not get me wrong - they need to be addressed as well - but this is a matter of how we build new opportunities in order that people who are sitting around this table in another 30 years will not be looking at the exact same problems we are looking at today.