Ms Lianne Quigley:

My colleagues can come in on this as well if they like. When we look at society from an ableist perspective, and as Mr. Sherwin mentioned, we really should look at how we include disabled people on an equal basis and make sure they are included in things that happen in everyday life, such as communication and conversation. From my experience as a deaf person, when it comes to wanting to work together to have a shared aim, a shared focus and a shared objective, not to exclude people at all but really to focus on the collective working together, it is important that disabled people themselves can work with one another along with parents and carers as a collective, with everyone involved. There is the element of life experience, but there are also plenty of instances of people who are involved in their lives every day such that there is an element that needs to be included to work together on. Within Ireland, when it comes to disabled people and disabled people's organisations, much of it depends on voluntary time. There are not a lot of resources when it comes to actually resourcing these organisations and this advocacy. It is all based on voluntarism and people voluntarily giving of their time.

I will ask Mr. Sherwin or Mr. Walsh to add a little more on this topic. I will pass over to them now.