Cover Letter

Maryam Madani

& Peadar O’Dea

Disability Power Ireland

disabilitypowerireland@gmail.com

To

Niamh Smyth, Cathaoirleach of the Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media,

Disability Power Ireland wishes to thank you for this opportunity to share our experiences with the Committee. We would like to ask, along with our colleagues in DADA (Disabled Artists and Academics), that members of both DPOs be invited to speak to the Committee about their experiences in person, to ensure that the lived experience of disabled people is being heard. We wish to make Committee members aware of the gravity of the situation of which we are speaking of and its effects on keeping disabled people in poverty in Ireland. Both local government and department structures are in a position to make changes that can help to alleviate the issues that we are discussing here, for both disabled artists and audiences.

Thank you once more for listening.

Go raibh míle maith agat,

Maryam Madani and Peadar O’Dea,

Chair/Founder and Policy Officer

Disability Power Ireland

Disability Power Ireland

Submission to the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media

Friday 27th January 2023

Introduction: Who We Are and the Role of the Arts

Disability Power Ireland is a grassroots, cross-impairment DPO (Disabled Persons’ Organisation) run entirely by and for disabled people, whose mission is to enhance the visibility and inclusion of the disabled community. We aim to do this through an annual Disability Pride and Power Festival and Parade for Disability Pride Month in July.

We have a particular focus on the arts and culture as powerful vehicles for changing public perception about what it means to be disabled and the barriers we face, in building positive disabled identities and creating opportunities to increase participation, reduce isolation, and build community.

We also seek to change public perception by spreading awareness of the social model of disability^[1] and moving away from medical, charity, and tragedy models.

We aim to reduce isolation, and provide opportunities to increase the participation of disabled people ourselves in all levels of policy and decision-making, in the disability sector, in arts, culture and wider society. In this we follow the Independent Living Movement and the slogan “Nothing About us Without Us.”

The voices and experiences of disabled people must be heard at all levels of society and policy-making in order to make the necessary changes to facilitate our inclusion, and we welcome this opportunity to submit our experiences to the Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media

Our Members: Disabled Artists and Audiences

“As an organisation composed entirely of disabled people, we are afraid and reluctant to apply for the necessary funding to put on our festival and parade, solely because once any of us receive a grant to our bank account, even if it is to be shared with the group, we may have our disability allowance and medical cards rescinded.”

-          Member of Disability Power Ireland

“My excitement at being accepted for the Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme was cut short when my disability allowance was cut in half from 200 to 90e a week. I am not allowed to earn anything else on top of it. Meanwhile, non-disabled peers who have received it are able to earn as much as they wish, and they have to continue working other jobs. The Basic Income for the Arts is a minimum stipend award and a safety net as they pursue other, intermittent paying gigs in the arts. For me, it is still a poverty trap.”

-          Member of Disability Power Ireland

Disability Power Ireland’s membership encompasses both disabled creatives, facilitators, audiences and consumers of the arts. We held a consultation with our members for this submission on Wednesday 25th January, and asked for their written responses a few days prior. When seeking their opinion on increasing participation in the arts, a number of the same systemic barriers arose. These include that:

1. Disabled people, and especially disabled artists are at a much higher risk of poverty^[2], all for whom disability allowance and the basic income for the arts become a poverty trap instead of helping to cover the additional costs of living with impairments. Disabled artists and facilitators, including the committee members of Disability Power Ireland are unable to apply for festival funding, community or individual grants, bursaries, or financial awards, for fear of losing their basic allowances and their medical card.
2. Barriers to access for the arts include not only the financial ones above, but also come down to lack of access to building infrastructure, sign language or lack of Personal Assistance hours to enable disabled people to attend or access events.

The additional annual cost of living with a disability, as demonstrated in the The INDECOn Cost of Disability Report, is between 8,700-12,300 euro^[3]. This is roughly the amount of Blind Pension or Disability Allowance at 208 euro a week, yet instead of going towards covering the additional cost, it is assumed that this is enough for a disabled person to live on and pay rent on. When disabled people earn more than 140 euro a week, their disability allowance can be reduced or even taken away, keeping them trapped in poverty, and unable to earn or apply for grants for fear of losing their basic supports. Our members expressed that they cannot even apply for grants from Arts & Disability Ireland for this reason.

Our members wanted to emphasise that disabled people have a right to participate not just as artists but also as audience members to the arts. Many of our members are still isolated and institutionalised in their own homes for lack of PA hours, which are necessary for them to attend events. As artists, they have to turn down opportunities to grow as they are not able to attend rehearsals, or enter certain buildings due to lack of infrastructural access including lack of accessible toilets let alone being able to enter the building in the first place.

Rights in Relation to Culture, Media and the Arts

There are many ways in which the marginalisation of disabled people, and other disenfranchised groups, has been compounded by the media. Most fundamental is the issue of accessibility, for access to the media has been acknowledged as a prerequisite to “full and effective citizenship:”^[4]

“Full and effective citizenship requires access to the range of information, insights, arguments, and explanations that enable people to make sense of the changes affecting their lives, and to evaluate the range of actions open to them both as individuals and as members of a political community. Without these resources, they are excluded from effective participation. They become the victims not the subjects of change, unable to pursue their rights and press for their extension.”^[5]

 The media compounds the exclusion of disabled people from full and equal participation and citizenship not only by denying access, but also by circulating discriminatory content, which disabled people, like other marginalised sections of society, do not have sufficient power to counteract.

Disabled people’s rights with regard to culture and the media are well supported by the UNCRPD^[6], in provisions including inter alia: Article 8 “Awareness-raising”; Article 9 on “Accessibility”; Article 12 “Freedom of expression and opinion, and access to information”; Article 30 “Participation in Cultural life,” which includes the right to “Enjoy access to television programmes, films, theatre and other cultural activities, in accessible formats” while Article 27 (Work And Employment)  guarantees disabled people “to work, on an equal basis with others; this includes the right to the opportunity to gain a living by work freely chosen or accepted in a labour market and work environment that is open, inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities.” and Article 5 on “Discrimination.”^[7] Article 4 includes states’ obligations to “take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices that constitute discrimination against persons with disabilities”^[8] and to take into account the protection and promotion of the human rights of persons with disabilities in all policies and programmes.”^[9] The European Accessibility Act (Directive EU 2019/882), Irish Sign Language Act (2017) and the Broadcasting Act (2009) all provide additional rights for disabled people regarding media access.

It is necessary then, as both a human right and prerequisite to full citizenship, that disabled people be granted full access to culture and the arts on an equal basis with others, and that Government bodies do all that they can to facilitate this right, in line with the UNCRPD.

Recommendations

Disability Power Ireland believes that there are many ways in which local government bodies can support the participation of disabled people in community arts. In respect of the disabled community, we have and will continue to make recommendations for the underlying issues which other departments are also responsible for, including but not limited to the:

• Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
• Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
• Department of Social Protection
• Department of Enterprise, Trade and Protection
• Department of Health

Our Recommendations to local government include:

1.          That local government allocate specific funding for disability and the arts to DPOs and disabled artists. These must not be assessed as income in order to allow disabled people to apply for them without fear of losing their supports.

2. That local government allocate specific funding for grants to cultural institutions, community groups, and in some cases even private businesses, to pay for sign language interpretation, infrastructure renovation, and any other means to improve accessibility and participation of disabled people to the arts. The infrastructure renovation grant could be  similarly to the housing adaptation grant. A scheme to even allow private businesses to help pay for ramps and renovate buildings would help to change the

3. Include disabled people in local government structures and pay disabled activists basic stipends for standing on such advisory panels- they are the only people in the context who are not being paid for their work, unlike all other civil servants, and even members of this Committee.

Our Recommendations to the above departments include:

1. To add a provision in social protection legislation to exclude income from grants, bursaries, and awards from means assessment. This is similar to the income disregard in “Catherine’s Law,” which allows disabled academics to keep their PhD scholarships without losing their supports, including disability allowance, medical card and free travel pass.
2. To legislate for the right to personal assistance hours and drastically increase personal assistance hours.
3. To ensure that all grants offered to disabled and non-disabled artists do not assess earnings as income, to allow for disabled people to retain their basic supports such as disability allowance which cover only the additional cost of having a disability.