New disability strategy sets the right principles and opens useful levers

The new disability strategy arrives with a bold name and a deliberate shift in tone. Launched last Wednesday (September 3) the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People 2025–2030 frames disability policy squarely as a matter of rights and equality rather than charity. The Government’s flagship document organises its ambitions around five pillars: inclusive learning and education; employment; independent living and active participation; wellbeing and health; and transport and mobility. It explicitly anchors itself in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which Ireland ratified in 2018, and whose Optional Protocol came into force here last…