Access to Heritage Conference The above conference was held at the Presidents’ Hall, Law Society, Blackhall Place, Dublin 7 on the 30th of May 2012. The first session was chaired by Martin Colreavy, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. This session started at 9.00am with opening address by Jimmy Deeniham TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. He believes in making heritage buildings and places accessible for all. Mr Deeniham said he is ready to sit down and discuss with different groups and organizations on ways to achieve this. He pledged to do his best and use his office to facilitate access to heritage places and buildings for people with all types of disabilities. The director for National Disability Authority Siobhan Barron addressed the audience. She stated that NDA is an independent statutory body established 12years ago for information and advice to government on practices and policies that impact on the lives of people with disabilities. Also to build good environment, transport, healthcare, employment and other health issues. Furthermore, to see how environment, services, information, communication technologies can be accessible to all. Ms Barron said about 750,000 people in Ireland have some form of disability and there is an increase in negative attitude towards them. She mentioned that the role of universal design is important in helping to see how much can be achieved for people of all ages and sizes. Also, compliance with the code of practice ensures compliance with the disability act. With code of practice we’ll be conducting some kind of monitoring exercise and it’s all about getting and finding the right balance between promoting the integrity of heritage sites/facilities. Access guide and codes includes universal building plan, operation of heritage facility, good signage, use of plan english, text and websites can improve access, smartphone, GPS, training staff to understand limitations and engaging in sensitive issues. Seven video clips of people with different types of disabilities sharing their good and bad experiences in accessing heritage buildings and sites were shown. They were Tom Chambers, Caroline Carswell, Tom O’Neil, Donal Toolan, Shane Keogh, Louise Milicevic and Paul Hogan. Tom Chambers, Access Campaigner, narrated his holiday experiences at Prague because some of the historic places and heritage buildings were not accessible. His eyes only looked at the buildings but his legs couldn’t take him inside the buildings to really see and appreciate these places. Mr Chambers only relied on his camera to see some of these places. It was one of those moments that he will pause and think about his disability and life in wheelchair for three decades. He further highlighted the need for access to all and for the government to listen and work with them as experts of their own disabilities. Finally, he shared his experience with the staff of a museum in Ireland who opened the emergency fire exit and closed it quickly but it was not accessible and the historic building beside it was not accessible either because of the gravels on the pathway. Mr Chambers who loves visiting historic places and heritage buildings will like to see so many of them accessible for all in order to boost tourism and revenue to the state. In over 30 years of dealing with accessibility I never came across an access problem that could not be solved but I have come across many problems that were not allowed to be solved, he said. Tom Chambers Access Campaigner Knocknageeha Newport Co. Mayo

LATER this week, a Government group charged with examining how the €1.5bn disability budget is spent will hold its last meeting to sign off on its final report. Its mission, as part of the Government's "value for money review", was to establish whether taxpayers' money was wisely spent. The report, which will go to the Minister for Health James Reilly later this month, is understood to highlight a range of inefficiencies. It throws up such issues as the cost of transport, catering, and overlapping services. But according to reports last week, one of the main findings is that 85 per cent of the €1.5bn disability budget is spent on staff. That leaves €230m for everything else. On the face of it, the figure seems huge. But as any parent of a severely disabled child will testify, their greatest need is human intervention in the form of therapeutic care, respite care and hands-on therapies. Disability is a labour-intensive business, according to John Dolan, chief executive of the Disability Federation of Ireland, and far from being bloated, there are not enough staff to cope. "The demographics are going against us. People are living longer. Children that wouldn't have survived birth are now surviving," said Dolan. According to sources, the big issue for the "value for money" team was not so much staff numbers as staff costs, the services provided and the proliferation of overlapping organisations, funded directly or indirectly by the State to provide services to the growing population of people with disabilities. The report will show that the salaries for people working in the disability sector are almost twice the sums earned in other countries. But the same is true for teachers, hospital consultants, gardai and other frontline staff who work in the Irish public service. The Government has agreed that public-sector salaries are off limits. Tied up in the Croke Park agreement, public sector salaries are frozen rather than slashed in return for employees being more flexible. Eamon Walsh, a disability campaigner and Labour Party representative, claims that Croke Park is affecting frontline services. He claimed that the Brothers of Charity in Galway had diverted money from frontline services for people with disabilities to meet the cost of incremental pay increases due to mostly junior staff under the Croke Park agreement. Faced with the refusal of the HSE to cover the cost of the incremental increases, the Brothers of Charity went to the Labour Court, which told the Brothers they had to pay out of their own budget. "When I mentioned this before, I got a huge backlash from the unions," he said. "But someone has to grab that bull by the horns and run with it." The pay of senior executives working for these disability groups is another matter. Three years ago, Mary Harney, then health minister, said she was "disturbed" to find that some chief executives were on salaries of €90,000 to €176,000 at a time when the frontline services they provided were being severely cut. The Brothers of Charity employed six regional chief executives on salaries of €90,000-€113,000, but their salaries could not be cut because they were on public-sector contracts. One of the biggest earners is Angela Kerins, the chief executive of Rehab, who disclosed that she earned €234,000. Rehab pointed out that her salary was paid from the organisation's commercial activities rather than its €36m HSE grant. The Department of Health remains exercised by the executive pay in disability organisations, according to an internal department memo published earlier this year: "We are finding agencies generally are not particularly transparent about owning up to the source of funding for their chief executive salaries or are stating that they are in line with the consolidated scales (approximately €150,000 per annum), where we know that they are most likely topped up from other funds." The "value for money" review is also expected to recommend merging services. This will not only reduce the number of executives generously paid from the State purse, but will cut out administration-heavy organisations. How many advocacy groups does a sector need? People with Disabilities, a national lobby group, has already fallen by the wayside -- its €900,000 grant was scrapped last year. Kathleen Lynch, the junior health minister, explained that "unfortunately the majority of the funding was going on administration and running their national headquarters. That was never what it was about". With cuts to respite care, home help hours and therapeutic services, the need for efficiencies in the disability sector has never been greater. Seven hundred children with serious intellectual disability will leave school this month in need of ongoing therapy, but parents fear there is no place for them. The report may well provide the momentum to cut the middle man and let the money follow those with disabilities: funding the individual rather than the service providers. "Even if you start moving things around very radically, there is still going to be a problem because of the greater demand for services and supports," said John Dolan. - Maeve Sheehan