The government’s newly launched Disability Strategy 2025-20230 is full of aspirational language but lacks funding commitments or implementation details, according to Social Democrats disability spokesperson Liam Quaide.
Deputy Quaide said:
“For a sector that is so deep in crisis, across all areas – be it educational placements, access to therapies or residential services – a Disability Strategy with meaningful targets has never been more urgently needed.
“What we have been offered instead is an aspirational document with an absence of timelines, funding commitments or staffing benchmarks.
“As much as we should welcome its human-rights focused language and its emphasis on consultation with disabled people, the document will be largely meaningless if its implementation is not funded in the upcoming budget.
“We have had visionary government documents on disability reform in the past that have come to nothing as they were not followed by the political will to invest in services and vindicate the rights of our disabled citizens.
“It is deeply worrying that the document contains no clear commitment to upholding the right of children with additional needs to be educated within their local communities.
“While Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities is clear on a disabled person’s “right to an inclusive education system at all levels, in the communities in which they live”, the government’s Strategy only commits to “develop a roadmap for inclusive education… to take account of… Ireland’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.” This is vague, non-commital language that will offer no comfort to families facing lengthy, gruelling commutes to their child’s school.
“Another crisis skirted by this Strategy is that of waiting lists in primary care services – the Strategy aims to ‘deliver actions to ensure more timely access to primary care therapy’.
“There is also reference to building capacity in primary care yet crucially no commitment to staffing targets for these services in either the Disability Strategy itself or roadmap documents it refers to.
“The Strategy does clearly commit to a single point of access approach to services across Primary Care, Disability and CAMHS – while this will help prevent children being passed from one waiting list to the next, it is not a solution to the chronic under-resourcing of primary care services and the continued recruitment restrictions imposed on them by the Pay and Numbers Strategy.
“As I confirmed earlier this year through Parliamentary Questions, the neglect of these services over many years by successive governments has led to children throughout the country routinely waiting many years for support such as occupational therapy, psychology and speech and language therapy.
“The Disability Strategy refers briefly to the over 1,200 disabled people aged under 65 residing in nursing-homes due to a lack of specialised residential services, rehabilitation and statutory home support – there is no indication of how the government will commit to the findings of the Ombudsman’s ‘Wasted Lives’ report, now four years old.
“This new Disability Strategy is due to be followed by its first Action Plan within three months of its publication – it is vital that this moves beyond aspirational language towards clear time-frames, benchmarks and funding commitments.
“We also need to see a clear commitment to uphold the right of people with disabilities to be educated within their local communities and a concrete plan for creating that capacity.”
September 5th, 2025