REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE EXCELLENCE THROUGH ACCESSIBILITY AWARD
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE EXCELLENCE THROUGH ACCESSIBILITY AWARD IN FARMLEIGH, WEDNESDAY, 5 OCTOBER, 05
Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid specisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Thank you for the warm reception and my thanks for Sean Aylward to his invitation to launch the Excellence through Accessibility Award for public services.
This new Award scheme is designed to encourage and reward best practice in making our public services more accessible to people with disabilities. Some three hundred and thirty thousand of our citizens, that is, one in twelve of our people, live with some form of disability. For them the quality of access to public services can make the difference between enjoying life and enduring it. The pathways to access should be particularly and especially smooth for those whose lives are characterised by significant obstacles and so this Award will give national recognition to the efforts of those who go that extra mile for this vulnerable section of our society. It will set their work on a pedestal of achievement, not just to be admired for its excellence, but to be emulated for its effectiveness in promoting meaningful, lived, full social inclusion.
We have made great progress in the provision of public services in Ireland in many areas in recent years, and creating a modern, comprehensive equality code is one of them. We have an impressive array of legislation designed to protect the rights of the individual supported by a framework of authorities and agencies. Disability is one of the causes of inequality which has been addressed and the Award I am pleased to launch today, is one of the National Disability Authority’s supports for improving the opportunities of people with disabilities. Its purpose is to create an environment of sensitivity and support so that they can meet head on, the challenges which disability presents, maximise their independence, their contribution to society and realise their fullest potential.
I know that many of the people in this room work very hard to deliver the best public services possible to all of our community. I thank you for your commitment and restless dedication to improving those services and access to them for people with disabilities. This new Award lays down the challenge to keep on searching for fresh and better ways of service delivery. I hope the challenge will be widely taken up and that, through it, Ireland will continue to develop and mainstream a disability intelligent environment, and a disability sensitive environment.
I am grateful to the very many organisations and individuals who assisted the National Disability Authority in developing this Award, and the accompanying guidelines and assessment tool. To those organisations who piloted it and so helped the idea of the Award to become a reality - a big thank you.
Warm congratulations to the National Disability Authority itself, particularly the Accessibility Team, to the officials in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform all of whom have played important roles in progressing the Award. Their reward will be the new ideas, the sharper focus, the insistent search for excellence which people with disabilities can expect and experience as part of the culture of the public service.
It now gives me great pleasure to launch the Excellence through Accessibility Award.
Go raibh maith agaibh.