The Government has announced it will set up a National Disability Authority to oversee policy and services for disabled people. The head of the National Rehabilitation Board, which will be subsumed into the new body, called the decision "a new dawn for people with disabilities in Ireland". The announcement was made by Ms Mary Wallace, Minister of State for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, at a conference at Dublin Castle.
She said last year's report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities had recommended the setting up of "an executive body which will monitor the impact of public policy and services on people with disability". It would oversee the system at local level and have the power to intervene in particular cases to ensure equity.
Ms Wallace said an "establishment group" would put forward proposals for setting up the authority within six months. This would comprise representatives from the Departments of Health and Children; Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Social, Community and Family Affairs; Finance; and two members nominated by the Minister for Justice.
She also envisaged the setting up of a Disability Support Service, another commission recommendation, which would provide a network of local advice centres for people with disabilities; and the transfer of the training and employment of disabled people from the Department of Health and Children to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
It is the intention of the Minister, Mr O'Donoghue, that "the staffing and assets of the NRB as at present constituted will form the basis for the resources necessary to establish the new body", Ms Wallace told the conference on disability and human rights.
The new authority will monitor compliance with the commission's recommendations; co-ordinate national disability policies; undertake research on disability issues; require proper standards for services to disabled people; and provide grievance and redress procedures.
The NRB's chief executive, Dr Arthur O'Reilly, said: "For the first time . . . we will have, in the National Disability Authority, a modern, effective organisation with real teeth. It marks a departure from a range of outdated legislation, built at a time when attitudes to disability were so much more patronising than today's inclusive rights agenda."
He welcomed the proposed transfer of training and employment to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment as "a decisive shift towards seeing disability as a social rather than a medical issue", and emphasised the change was not just one of name: "It will mean radically different structures, with a new role, new resources and new powers for the NDA."
Mr Justin Dart, former chairman of the US President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, said Ireland was leading the way in "the move from the paternalistic medical model to the social empowerment model" of working with disability.