NDS Implementation Plan Needs To Be In Place by End May 2011

We are coming into May, and we are now one third of the way through the year, and the new Government has been in place since early March.

The Government has made a number of specific and very welcome commitments to people with disabilities across a wide range of areas from legislation in relation to mental capacity and universal design, introducing standards and personal budgets, a commitment to achieving greater participation in employment, training, education and other areas.

To achieve these and the other commitments the Government states that, “we will reform the delivery of public services to bring about back office savings that will protect front line services……We will publish, following wide consultation, a realistic implementation plan for the National Disability Strategy.”

We all know of, and have agreed to, the outcomes to be delivered by the NDS: sufficient income to live on, access to the full range of public and social services, etc. But right now we need the “implementation plan”, along with the mechanisms to support it.

Much work was done over the winter by DFI and the Disability Stakeholders Group (DSG) working with senior officials from a number of Government Departments, including the Taoiseach’s Department, to fashion that implementation plan. That plan can be, and needs to be, completed and signed off urgently otherwise those worthy and necessary commitments will go the way of many before them for want of an effective whole of Government implementation plan.

This plan should be completed and in operation by the end of May. It is possible to do this, given the considerable work undertaken to date.

John Dolan CEO