A year ago the Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform announced the replacement of the National Rehabilitation Board by a new National Disability Authority, and the transfer of many of the NRB's functions to mainstream organisations like FAS.
The move was welcomed by those suffering from disabilities and the wider community. But a year later, although the NDA Bill has passed all stages in the Oireachtas, and £2 million has been allocated to it this year, it has no staff and no CEO. The Bill to establish the new organisation dealing with information and advocacy for the disabled, Comhairle, is at the drafting stage.
As the discussion on the transfer of services out of the NRB continues, one of the working groups set up to deal with it has said there will be a diminution of service to people with disabilities when the vocational training functions of the NRB are transferred to FAS.
The establishment group overseeing the transfer is chaired by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and has representatives on it of other relevant Government Departments as well as organisations like ICTU and those working with people with disabilities.
Ms Mary Wallace, the Minister of State, told The Irish Times last month that she expected to be advertising for posts in the NDA in the autumn.
However, in a letter to the chairwoman of the NRB at the end of June she said: "The staffing of the NDA will, as with the other elements of the new structures, be met from within existing NRB structures. There are no specific proposals in place to advertise posts for any of the new agencies although this could arise at the time of transition if, for instance, posts were vacant".
She told The Irish Times last week that she did not know whether positions would be advertised until it was clear who from the NRB was staying and who was going. There was a Government commitment to meet the needs of the new organisations first from the NRB. "We have 189 staff on the one hand and 189 job descriptions on the other", she said. She did not yet know whether the position of CEO of the NDA would be one of those which would eventually need to be advertised.
Ms Sylda Langford, chairwoman of the establishment group, said there were two phases to the process. The first was getting all the institutional pieces into place, and this was almost complete. There would then be information days for staff, with whom there had already been consultation. This would be followed by detailed negotiations.
However, according to union sources there is concern about the quality of the consultation process so far. "The interface with the establishment group is of a consultative nature, but all of our responses to proposals are slapped down", said one union source. "We don't find we're in the debate at all, either with the board, the Department or FAS".
Meanwhile, a report to the establishment group from the Working Group on Employment, Work and Training, which examined the proposed transfer of these services to FAS, has said that this will mean a diminution of the service because not enough people were being transferred to do the job.
"In practical terms a diminution of service under FAS may mean that people with disabilities will have to wait longer for assessment, that monitoring of training delivery may have to be reduced, or that people with disabilities will have to travel further for service, as the geographical spread of specialist NRB staff will be less than at present", it said.
However, Ms Langford said she did not accept there would be any diminution of service, as a group of people with expertise on the issue of disabilities would be integrated into a much larger vocational and training organisation, thereby increasing the service.
The working group report also endorsed the view of FAS that many of its premises were not accessible for people with disabilities, and that it lacked the physical space for the integration of the new staff from the NRB.
The group's conclusions are backed by SIPTU, which organises NRB vocational advisers and other staff. It has asked the establishment group how a figure of 70 staff (out of 189) for transfer to FAS was arrived at.
This leaves 111 staff to be dispersed to two new organisations not yet in existence, and to health boards, which will take on some services to people with specific disabilities. One of the concerns of the NRB staff was that no one should move until the fate of everyone was agreed.
It remains unclear what will happen to the senior management at the NRB under CEO Dr Arthur O'Reilly, who, along with a number of his colleagues, originally came from FAS, the body which will assume the vocational duties of the NRB.
In an attempt to have an "inclusive and transparent" forum on services for people with disabilities, the SIPTU section of the NRB is organising a conference on October 19th open to clients, service-providers and other interested bodies. FAS has declined an invitation to attend.