Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 8:

In page 9, line 48, after "by" to insert "persons who have disabilities,".

I welcome that the Minister of State will table an amendment broadly similar to mine. Last year, a head of an institute published a report on participation in services for students with disabilities in institutes of technology. The study was conducted in 14 of the 15 institutes between 2004 and 2005. Unfortunately, its results leave much to be desired in terms of the number of students with disabilities in institutes of technology. In the 14 institutes, only 1,366 graduates had disabilities. In total, this figure represented 2.76% of the undergraduate population.

There was a quite a degree of variation. At the Institute of Technology Tralee, the figure was 5.5%, but in Cork IT the figure was only 0.5%. The institutes need to place a greater emphasis on persons with disabilities. Likewise, only three institutes employed a disability officer, which was a part-time position in one of those institutes. Six institutes carried out access audits while a seventh was beginning that process. Regarding accessibility to buildings, only in five institutes were all buildings accessible to students with disabilities. This shows the need for a greater emphasis on this matter.

As universities have been under the Higher Education Authority, they have had a natural advantage in that they were, on average, getting between €500,000 and €1 million in funding ring-fenced for disability initiatives whereas the institutes' average was approximately €50,000. Hopefully, putting the institutes under the HEA will address that issue.

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