Taoiseach Announces Focused Agenda for Driving Change for Disabled People
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Taoiseach Micheál Martin today published the initial Programme Plan for his Department’s new Disability Unit for 2025-2027.
The new unit, established by the Taoiseach, aims to bring a fresh impetus to delivering improvements for disabled people and their families.
Improving the lives of people with disabilities, advancing their rights, and enabling them to reach their full potential, is a core focus and priority of the Government.
Today the Government adopted a whole-of-Government approach to advancing the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol through a new national disability strategy (the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People 2025-2030).
The new Disability Unit in the Department of the Taoiseach, through implementation of its Programme Plan, and working closely with the Department of Children, Disability and Equality and across Government, will support this work.
The Programme Plan, published today, outlines an initial work programme comprising ten initiatives across the following five workstreams:
- Workstream 1: Transforming Children’s Disability Services – Early Years, Education and Health
- Workstream 2: Increasing System Capacity
- Workstream 3: Opening Doors and Addressing Barriers to Employment Pathways and Supports
- Workstream 4: Implementing the National Disability Strategy
- Workstream 5: Planning and Designing for the Future
The focused approach and agenda of the unit, as outlined in this Programme Plan, is intended to strengthen the capacity of the overall system to deliver on Government’s ambition and the ambition of everyone living with a disability.
The Taoiseach said:
“I am determined that this will be a government which moves forward with purpose to improve the level and scale of support for disabled people and their families.
“I have established the Disability Unit within my Department to enhance cross-government working and collaboration, to troubleshoot, to drive innovation and change, to give momentum to policy delivery and to simplify pathways and improve services – in effect to make things happen.
The Unit will also bring further impetus to the level of ambition and reform needed in disability services.”
The programme plan is available to read on the Gov.ie website.
