People with Disabilities in Ireland
4th Floor Jervis House
Jervis Street
Dublin 1
Telephone: 01 87 21 74 4
Fax: 01 87 21 77 1
Email: info@pwdi.ie
PwDI recently expressed grave concern that the bulk of the money for disability in the Government's Budget Estimates which has been allocated to the health services.
Nigel Brander, PwDI National Chairman said:"While health is a vital area this smacks of the medical model of disability rather than a human rights approach. We would be concerned that the vital issues of education and employment for people with disabilities may be neglected."
He pointed to a recent ESRI report for the National Disability Authority which found that in education people with disabilities aged 25 to 34 are four times less likely to have a qualification beyond primary level and are half as likely to reach third level as their peers.
"This report also found that the economic boom of the last decade did not benefit the disabled community and that only a minority of people with disabilities are in work," he said. "These areas must be urgently addressed. A root and branch review of State disabilities services is urgently needed. And it must lead to a single authority with overall responsibility for ensuring co-ordination and delivery of disability services across all Government departments, if the Government's national disability strategy is to stand any chance of being successful."
"Otherwise, we will simply see more of the same ineffectual and patchy practices that currently exist, and as a recent Health Research Board report shows, a reduction in services if the demand continues to rise at current rates," he concluded.
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