The State's way of dealing with people with disabilities will change radically from January. The National Rehabilitation Board will be replaced by a National Disability Authority and many of its functions will transfer to mainstream services such as FAS.
The National Representative Council, which represents 2,000 people who use disability services, greeted the move warmly.
"For people with disabilities throughout Ireland, this is unquestionably the most important day since the foundation of the State," said its chief executive, Mr Paddy Doyle.
The National Disability Authority, which will report to the Oireachtas every year, will be a "powerhouse", according to the Minister of State for Equality, Justice and Law Reform, Ms Mary Wallace.
The main features of the new arrangements are:
The National Disability Authority will develop codes of practice for disability services, monitor these services and report to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Oireachtas.
Sixty per cent of authority members will be people with disabilities and in the case of those with mental handicaps, their parents or carers.
Work training and employment services for people with disabilities will move from the Department of Health and Children to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
Information, advice and advocacy services will be provided by a new body to be created from merging the National Social Services Board and a section of the NRB which provides similar services for people with disabilities. The NSSB already provides "mainstream" information services at Citizens' Information Centres around the State.
Certain NRB health services will be administered instead by the health boards.
"People with disabilities will no longer have segregated services," Ms Wallace said yesterday. "This form of apartheid was demeaning. Services to people with disabilities will have to be more mainstream, accessible, responsive and sensitive to their customers in future."
The chairwoman of the NRB, Ms Jacqui Browne, welcomed the announcement as "a new dawn". "People with disabilities will be able to see a future with greater equality of opportunity."
The chief executive of the Rehab Group, Mr Frank Flannery, said the new authority "has the teeth to lead people with disabilities into a new era where they will at last be treated as full and equal citizens of the State."
The information and advocacy service to be formed from the merger of the NSSB and of a section of the NRB will promote "empowerment for people with disabilities through appropriate, accessible and mainstream services," the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, said. His Department will fund the service.
Mr Doyle, speaking for the NRC, said the setting up of the authority "signals a new era - a time for action when we can finally play our part as full and equal citizens in the life of the nation."
The changes will improve the quality of life of about 340,000 people with disabilities, according to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue.
They originate in the report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities.