One of the major obstacles facing people with disabilities is the discrimination they encounter from society as a whole, said the National Disability Authority.
Speaking today at the launch of the NDA's strategic plan, authority chairperson Ms Angela Kerins said attitudes toward people with disabilities were still lacking, despite the fact that equal status was a basic human right.
"There are no tiers on grades of rights," she said.
The document, entitled A Matter of Rights, outlines the group's plans to ensure the rights of the estimated 350,000 people with some form of disability in Ireland are applied within the education, access, employment and recreation fields in the next three years.
It points out four main ways how this is to be achieved: influencing public policy to promote equal status, ensuring all public services are accessible to all within five years, enforcing best-practice standards in these services and trying to change public attitudes to those with disabilities.
The Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Ms Mary Wallace, said today the Government was fully committed to introducing legislation to secure equal rights for all.
"Equal status is a deeper and more subtle objective than can be achieved through anti-discrimination measures alone," she said. Ms Wallace insisted that a "rights-based approach" must be adopted to defeat prejudice.
"The NDA is giving us fair warning that it will be looking to quality in services as well as equality in treatment."