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In 2009, NESC published Ireland’s Five Part Crisis and Challenge. Nearly five years later, the current report Ireland’s Five Part Crisis, Five Years On — Deepening Reform and Institutional Innovation points to some key areas of recovery: significant fiscal consolidation, some recovery of competitiveness, export growth and the resilience of Foreign Direct Investment. However, it also notes that domestic and international factors continue to constrain recovery, in particular the fragility of global growth, weakness in the Euro area, low levels of investment, high levels of overhanging debt and the scale of unemployment.

The Council welcomes the bill in so far as it accomplishes the task of consolidating legal provisions so as to harmonise, clarify and update the legislation in the field of disabled rights in a comprehensive text, without overstepping this remit. It is worth recalling that the sole function of legislative royal decrees is to recast and harmonise existing legal texts on a particular subject and in no event may they alter the spirit of existing legislation, adding or removing points in the provisions being consolidated.Yet the Council believes that the inclusion in the legislative royal decree of a chapter devoted to disabled people’s right to work, along with certain amendments, are sufficient reason for there to have been more participation by the social partners in the text’s preparation prior to it being submitted to the Council.