A trip to Farmleigh. It must have been important to drag hacks out to the park. Then there was the guest-list. Enda, Joan, Frances Fitz and Aodhán beag, with a very special guest appearance by Fergus Finlay.

It was going to be big.

I bet you missed it. Don’t lie. You missed it. My editor missed it!

The Comprehensive Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities saw the light of day last Thursday. With an unemployment rate of way over 60%, you can see why we need a plan and concrete actions. So, I suppose it’s worth having as a first step.

The thing is that this first step comes after we spent billions on training people with disabilities since the 1980s thanks to EU funding. Go figure that out. The unemployment rate didn’t budge. Lots of empires were built with the wads of EU Cash. Let’s not dwell on the past. Let’s stick to the plan. I will try to be positive.

"Is his department the lead department driving the whole process? Of course not. It’s gonna be housed in the Equality/Community/Touchy-Feely bit of the Department of Justice."

Were you bowled over by the guest-list I mentioned earlier? This is where my big blue internal alarm went off. One of the joys of researching for a lunchtime news show is you get to see the inner workings of minds of people like Richard Bruton. Any mention of ‘job’ and you can guarantee that he’ll be there with a cheesy grin and a recycled press release launching yet another part of the Action Plan for Jobs.

So, where was he on Thursday? Nowhere to be seen. Is his department the lead department driving the whole process? Of course not. It’s gonna be housed in the Equality/Community/Touchy-Feely bit of the Department of Justice. Yes, there was a line or two saying the plan would dovetail with any Action Plan but a touchy feely unit - in a completely different part of Government - will not have an understanding of the day-to-day workings of the Department of Enterprise. There’s a word for it. Mainstreaming. Much abused but in this case it just might make work.

The really odd thing is way back in the noughties, training for disabled people was mainstreamed too. Think Fás/INTREO office. Like the one in my local area. Up a flight of stairs. Still. After 15 years.

As for any concrete actions in the plan, the headline grabbing number was the promise to increase the Public Service employment quota from 3% to 6%. This means 6% of the public service will be reserved for disabled people. This is great as far as it goes, but it nearly took 20 years to get to the aforementioned 3%! Also the cynic in me wants to see the spread of posts on offer. Will career progression be built in?

It is sad to say but for most disabled people, having a job costs money. Let’s go further, having a disability costs money.

Within the report there are fluffy promises of cross-departmental study groups and examinations of lesser known social welfare payments but no real commitment. Some dots are joined to make people look good. More low floor buses, accessible trains, etc... They’re all there. It’s a shame that many disabled people find public transport impossible. Again that adds to the costs of disability.

Still, it was a grand day out. That morning in Farmleigh.