Ms Lianne Quigley:

The DPO Network welcomes the opportunity to be here today. The DPO Network is an alliance of five national disabled persons’ organisations, DPOs, in Ireland who share values and an agreed set of principles to work together. Based on these shared values and principles we work together to help ensure that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, is fully implemented in Ireland. The five DPO member organisations are: AsIAm, Ireland’s national autism advocacy organisation; Disabled Women Ireland, DWI; Independent Living Movement Ireland, ILMI; Irish Deaf Society, IDS; and the National Platform of Self Advocates. Based on these shared values and principles and our commitment to the implementation of the UNCRPD, the DPO Network welcomes the opportunity to address the work of the joint committee in how we need to see progress on the design and delivery of policy relating to disabled persons lives in Ireland.

At its core, the UNCRPD acknowledges that DPOs represent disabled people on issues affecting them. Under Article 4.3, the convention states the State must actively involve both DPOs in how laws and policies are developed and how we need to be involved in the process.

The DPO Network views co-creation as the process that needs to underpin how the State works with DPOs, locally and nationally, into the future. We will soon publish our second position paper, Blueprint for Co-creation, where we will demonstrate what co-creation is and how it works. For this opening address we want to talk about co-creation as a process and how that has informed the new national disability strategy, but also how this now needs to be the benchmark for the process of policy development and implementation to bring about the inclusion of disabled people in Irish society.

Co-creation is an inclusive and collaborative process. It involves disabled people, their representative organisations the State and other stakeholders. They work together to develop, put in place, monitor and review policy and other actions. These policies and actions foster the meaningful inclusion and rights of disabled people in society. Co-creation is one way to achieve this change. It challenges existing decision processes by requiring equality among stakeholders. It shifts the balance of power between provider and recipient. Historically, the unbalance limited disabled people’s access to decision making. Co-creation also places a strong focus on the collective lived experience. At its core, co-creation is about bringing people together to engage as equals, in shaping shared values, goals and actions that lead to successful and impactful outcomes. When we work in partnership using co-creation disabled people and our representative organisations can bring a range of perspectives on policy issues. The co-creation process can enable the State and DPOs to develop a common understanding of issues that impact on disabled people who have one or more disabilities. Co-creation enables the State and DPOs to create safe, inclusive and accessible spaces for people to share and learn from one another. It enables the State and DPOs to build long-term relationships based on shared values, like a commitment to justice and equality. Co-creation enables the State and DPOs to foster creativity and innovation by engaging in new conversations with diverse groups. This leads to new ideas and knowledge.

The DPO Network played a central role in collaborating with the State, through the former Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. They worked together to develop the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People 2025-2030. The aim of this strategy is to progress Ireland’s implementation of the UNCRPD. Those developing the strategy were guided by a strong commitment to the principle of stakeholder engagement. They recognised the vital role of stakeholders, particularly DPOs and disabled people with lived experience. This means that we were actively involved in putting the strategy in place and voicing the key issues and concerns affecting disabled people. Over a two-year period, representatives of the DPO Network collaborated with the Department to shape the new strategy. The co-creation process began with a partnership agreement in which both the Department and the DPO Network affirmed their commitment to the co-creation process. We as partners established realistic expectations and recognised our collective limitations in what we could or could not do. The collaboration also emphasised the equal value of all partners’ expertise. This diverse expertise fostered knowledge-sharing and was the foundation for generating new insights. New insights are a fundamental part of co-creation. The process continued through regular and meaningful engagement, including joint meetings between the State and the DPO Network. We at the DPO Network facilitated the active participation of its members in identifying needs and designing and reviewing policy themes and priority actions. All involved needed to learn how to put co-creation in place while developing the national human rights strategy for disabled people. It was a complex and demanding process for both State and the DPO Network.

Members of the DPO Network are with officials from the Department of Children, Disability and Equality in New York today presenting at the CRPD Conference of State Parties to present this co-creation process as a model of best practice not only in Ireland but internationally.

Post UNCRPD ratification, we can all agree that the landscape has fundamentally altered and the emergence of DPOs as collective autonomous spaces has and will continue an upward trend from disabled people being often passively consulted towards disabled people in our authentic collective spaces co-creating systems and structures that will realise the UNCRPD. We have emerging, confident disabled persons' organisations, including DPO Network members, who are committed to utilising our expertise to co-create policies, systems and structures that will progressively realise the UNCRPD.

For co-creation to work we need to invest and resource DPOs. DPOs will need resources and time to develop our own analysis, and vision and values of how we will work, and often that requires resources. That is a key learning of the process. DPOs need resources from ISL translation, to support staff, to policy workers to community development workers. When we think of a co-creation process, our partners in DCDE have access to resources: staff to organise meetings, to prepare and read materials and to engage with other Departments. People’s time needs to be resourced. DPOs are the same. We need staffing costs and reasonable accommodation, and with that we can thrive but it takes time. DPOs are relatively new in Ireland.

The work we carried out as the DPO Network demonstrates that with investment, disabled people are effective at managing and controlling organisations, about employing and supporting staff to carry out key tasks and supporting our members to make collective decisions to bring about inclusion. The national disability strategy co-creation process shows the benefit of that investment. We cannot go back to a system of endless consultation or individual disabled people on committees without mandates. That approach does not work. It does not work for disabled people as a collective or for policymakers. If we want to make the UNCPRD a reality in our lives, we need to recognise the role of DPOs and resource them.

We understand that the remit of this committee is to consider all disability matters, including monitoring the implementation of the UNCRPD. However, in the spirit of co-creation, we would like to invite the committee to meet with DPOs to discuss priority issues and how much time it will allocate to each of these priorities for the year ahead. This forward planning will support our effective participation.

Further, to support this committee being as effective as possible, we as a network wish to explore whether there is scope to co-create how best the UNCRPD can be at the core of this committee’s work, whether DPOs and elected representatives can find the time to develop an agreed understanding of language, of how we view disability and whether the committee really can, or should, consider all disability matters as opposed to developing a process that is about the UNCRPD and its full implementation.

Co-creation as a process could inform the work of the committee on implementation of the UNCRPD, the need for legislative review and accountability about budgets and progress for inclusion in Ireland, which could lead to a consistent focus on the systems change that is needed for disabled people to live our lives as equals in an accessible, inclusive and equal Ireland.