A Social Report for Ireland Volume II - the NESC Website

people with disabilities 243Monitoring Disability in IrelandIn Ireland information on disability has been sparse and incomprehensive. TheNational Statistics Board (2003) noted that less than a quarter of social and equalitydata sources could be disaggregated by a disability indicator. Added to this is thevariation in the various definitions of disability applied to the data, for example,in relation to illness, impairment, and/or restriction. The National IntellectualDisability Database and the National Physical and Sensory Disability Database, bothheld by the Health Research Board, are important information sources which holddisability information (on those registered with them). Disability information isalso available from the Census, some surveys and administrative records, includingpatient registries.The 2006 Census contained questions on disability (building on earlier questionsin the 2002 Census). These questions identified people who have a long-lastingcondition which gives them difficulty in doing a specified number of activities. Theresults were published in 2007, (CSO, 2007d). More importantly, however, the 2006Census was followed up by Ireland’s first National Disability Survey (NDS), whichwas carried out in the autumn of 2006. The NDS questionnaires were based on thesocial model of disability which defines disability as the outcome of the interactionbetween a person with an impairment and the environmental and attitudinalbarriers s/he may face (CSO, 2008d: 8).The NDS includes information on disabled adults and children, people living inprivate households and people living in institutions. The first set of results have beenpublished (2008), providing information on the prevalence of disability, informationon nine disability types by age, gender, region, level of severity, age of onset, causeof the disability and aids used. A subsequent report (not yet published) will presentdata on education, work, transport, the built environment and social participationfor people with disabilities. The NDS will provide the most comprehensive dataon disability in Ireland to date, (for further details on this information source,see Appendix D).The Policy ContextUsing the format employed throughout this report, the key trends with regard to thewell-being of people with disabilities are summarised, using available information,across the six domains of the well-being framework, and these trends are thenlinked to the policy framework, Towards 2016. Towards 2016 lucidly summarisesthe main policy commitments and priority actions for people with disabilities, asarticulated in the National Disability Strategy. The vision and five high level goalsfor people with disabilities in Ireland, as specified in Towards 2016 are set out inthe box below.