Sepuloni CarmelHon ALFRED NGARO (National): Madam Chair I take it that this is both social development and disability issues under that—so I can ask questions of the Minister? CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): That's correct.Hon ALFRED NGARO: Thank you. So to the Minister in particular just around the disability issues we see under the Estimates there was over $500 million that was allocated in the Budget towards the health and disability sector. The questions I want to ask are twofold. What is the Government doing to increase access to services for the estimated additional 25 percent of people who are eligible for disability services but not currently using any of them that's been predicted by the sector? The second one: has any work been done on the impact of COVID on people with disabilities or are any additional initiatives under consideration?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Disability Issues): Thank you. I'll try to answer all those questions. Hopefully I got them down. So the 25 percent of those that have a disability that may be eligible for health supports and may not be accessing them is an interesting point for the member to raise. This has really been highlighted through the Enabling Good Lives work through the Mana Whaikaha programme through the prototype in MidCentral. It's really part of the system's transformation consideration that we have at the moment that so many people have accessed these programmes and it's been found that they have not been seeking out support they may be eligible for through the health system. It is an ongoing concern and we get more and more intel from the Enabling Good Lives - Mana Whaikaha initiatives as we go. That's part of what will inform systems transformation. So hence why we have the two demonstrations and then we have the prototype. So I can't respond entirely to that. I think that's a work in progress for us. The member also raised the impact of COVID. The Office for Disability Issues did do a survey—was it us or the Disabled People's Organisations (DPOs) that did it? Yeah we did do it—during COVID on people that were disabled and we got some really good feedback. Mostly people felt that that they were safe. Mostly people had what they needed. But of course there were still a few that raised issues about access to medication and food and also what came up during that period was access to data and information. The DPOs raised with us that they had been part of an all-of-Government programme to ensure that all communications were accessible for disabled people. So yes it was great that that was put into place; however there were issues around pace and how quickly information could be changed into different accessible formats and how quickly that could be put up in places where disabled people themselves could access it. There were issues around where that accessible information was put once it was available sometimes being kind of three levels deep on the COVID website. So those are all learnings that I think we can take from the COVID experience. Then as we move forward there will continue to be issues because of the anticipated job losses through COVID issues around employment for disabled people that were pre-existing issues that are going to be heightened in a tight labour market. So that's another thing to keep an eye on. In saying that I have said on multiple occasions that in the next few weeks we will be in a position to actually launch our first ever Disability Employment Action Plan which is timely given the context that we're currently in.