How Does an Authority Authorit?

national | health / disability issues | opinion/analysis Friday January 05, 2007 20:21 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

National Disability Authority Strategic Plan 2007 - 2009

The name "National Disability Authority" had a certain ring about it when it was set up in 2000 A.D. It seemed as if a strict teacher was being appointed to the task of preventing disabled people from being bullied any longer. However the fear now materialises that "authority" is the last thing disabled people want in their lives. Indeed most people are uncomfortable with the idea of authority and we all resent people who set themselves up to tell us what we can and cannot do. A cynical observer might conclude that the NDA has morphed into an organisation which colludes in the oppression of disabled people?

It is clear from the NDA’s Strategic Plan 2007 - 2009 that it sees its role as mainly an advisory one and it seems to be staking out for itself some responsibility in monitoring the progress of the National Disability Strategy. The strategic plan is densely written but it conveys the overall impression that it is defensive, abstract, abstruse. The product perhaps of too much thinking on too narrow a remit? One gets the overall impression that the writer is labouring under the burden of a hopeless philosophy, "Theirs not to reason why?" In particular (and I may have missed something in the plan when I re-read it in the last hour) there seems to be very weak connections between the NDA and The Department of Education laid out in the strategic plan. Obviously the future of disabled children is very closely bound up in how user friendly they find the education services in the country.

I do not know the details of what is involved in the National Disability Strategy but from reading the NDA’s strategic plan is seems that the aim of the National Disability Strategy is to improve the lives of disabled people. That is a positive stance and in my view it would seem to indicate that the National Disability Authority is itself probably only a transitional establishment. It points the way towards more incentives and more inclusion for disabled people.

Unfortunately the status of mentally ill people has become clouded over in recent years. No-one seems to know whether we are disabled or not and there is scant reference to mental illness in the NDA’s strategic plan. Mental patients are the most put-upon class of people in the whole population - I think - and consideration of our plight should be one of the most urgent tasks of the NDA. Merely referring to the report "A Vision for Change" is weak and disappointing in a plan I read in the hope of finding a word which might contribute to the liberation of mental patients.