Some 350,000 people with disabilities have been promised equal treatment with mainstream users of State services under a package of measures unveiled by the Government.
The Taoiseach heralded a "dramatic shift" in the State's approach to providing services for people with disabilities and promised that proposals to eliminate waiting lists for care services in this area were imminent.
"The providers of basic State services will, from now on, have the concerns of people with disabilities as part of their core work. Disability is no longer an area to be dealt with by someone else," Mr Ahern told the launch in UCD. The growing labour shortage is prompting official measures to encourage more employers to provide work for people with disabilities.
Among the measures included in the package are:
a National Disability Authority (NDA) to oversee the standards of services to disabled people;
replacement of the National Social Service Board by a new body, Comhairle, which will provide information and support services from a network of centres;
vocational training and employment services for people with disabilities to be transferred to FAS;
psychological services for children with disabilities to be mainstreamed into the National Educational Psychological Service;
non-vocational training and work and audiology services to be subsumed into the health board services.
The changes drew a mixed reaction from groups working in the area. The Rehab group welcomed the establishment of the National Disability Authority in particular.
However, the chairman of the Forum of People with Disabilities, Mr Donal Toolan, said the authority would only provide advice. It would not be able to sanction people who, for example, failed to make their buildings or transport services accessible.
Mr Ahern acknowledged the shortcomings of the existing services. Training programmes for disabled people ended up creating "permanent trainees" and the education system had been described as "one of the most inflexible and segregated in the world," Mr Ahern said. The lack of appropriate day, residential and respite care places had been one of the greatest failures of the system for many years, he said.
The changes mean many disability services, including vocational training, employment, information, support, audiology and psychology, will be mainstreamed. This means people with disabilities will receive services on the same basis and on the same premises as other members of society.
This entails a number of changes for the State bodies concerned. For example, FAS is spending £5 million on making its offices wheelchair-accessible, and may vacate some offices because they cannot be adapted.
The Minister of State responsible for the changes, Ms Mary Wallace, also announced an information campaign. As well as the distribution of 95,000 leaflets nationwide, a freephone number is available at 1800 350150.
The problem with many employers was they saw the disability, rather than someone's ability to do a particular job, Ms Wallace explained. "I could be great at computers, for example, but because I arrived in a wheelchair, the employer can't see beyond that," she said.
Mr Toolan said many of the bodies subsumed into the new authority had played a large part in creating the 80 per cent unemployment figure among disabled people and this raised questions about the National Disability Authority's ability to make a dent in that statistic.
The extent of the challenge faced by disabled people was illustrated by Mr Toolan's experience in travelling from Pearse Street to O'Connell Street in Dublin early yesterday morning. The journey of about half a mile took over two hours, he said, because none of the buses which passed him could take his wheelchair.
pcullen@irish-times.ie
