Disability Rights and Services

Our plan to remove barriers and realise a social model of disability.
Download our Disability Manifesto 2024

Labour Will:

  • Deliver a new National Disability Strategy and strengthen the National Disability Authority.
  • Establish a new office of the Disability Ombudsman to provide an accessible method to bring complaints about rights violations.
  • Ensure all legislation and budgets are disability and equality proofed.
  • Strengthen and adequately fund the National Advocacy Service and place it on a statutory footing.
  • Resource the community and voluntary sector with multi-annual funding, bring the terms and conditions of staff in Section 39 bodies in line with the public service through pay parity, and ringfence multi-annual funding for Disabled Persons Organisations (DPOs) to build capacity and self-advocacy.

Download our Disability Manifesto Easy Read Summary

Our Mission is to remove barriers to equality and inclusion for people with disabilities, guarantee adequate incomes, address the extra cost of disability, and ensure the State provides the public services and supports necessary for disabled people to participate fully in our society and economy.

Access and Routes to Employment

Ireland has the lowest employment rate for people with disabilities in the EU, and Labour will publish a new Comprehensive Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities and seek to raise the employment rate to the EU average. We will:

  • Improve data collection on rates of, and barriers to, employment for people with disabilities.
  • Introduce a new Comprehensive Employment Strategy for people with disabilities with the dedicated resources required to implement it.
  • Strengthen the role of the National Disability Authority in monitoring and implementation of policy and provide it with enforcement powers.
  • Meet the public sector recruitment target of 6%, extend it to bodies in receipt of public funding, and set a long-term goal of raising it further.
  • Provide access to dedicated job coaches.
  • Reform the Wage Subsidy Scheme with automatic minimum wage increases.
  • Introduce a single, streamlined scheme to replace the Reasonable Accommodation Fund and the Disability Awareness Support Scheme.

Realising the Right to Education for Children with Additional Needs

Children with Disabilities being failed by the State. Labour will:

  • Guarantee an appropriate school place for every child with additional needs.
  • Fund a €15m Waiting List Initiative to provide assessments of needs and reimburse parents for private therapies.
  • Introduce a Cost of Disability payment and reform disability payments.
  • Invest in disability services and more accessible transport and housing.
  • Develop a new Comprehensive Employment Strategy for people with Disabilities.

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