THE key message from the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities is that the greatest disabilities of all are imposed by society and not by medical conditions.
The key task of the council, which will replace the commission in January, is to make that message known and understood as widely as possible.
And the question which must occur to all of us is whether the commission's excellent and beautifully produced report will do anything more than gather dust on shelves.
The answer to that question must be that this report has a better chance than most of making a difference.
Its teeth will be supplied by two sources: the permanent Council for the Status of People with Disabilities and the disability movement itself.
The council will have teeth because most of its members will be people with disabilities or the parents or relatives of such people.
This represents a sea change in a situation in which many of the most important decisions about people's lives have been made by disability organisations in which the better paid jobs almost invariably go to people without disabilities.
It is, to say the least, a disgrace that the commission has had to recommend that such organisations should be obliged to fill at least 8 per cent of jobs with disabled people within four years - and, no, that is not a misprint for 80 per cent.
That is why the council will be different to anything that has gone before and why the implementation of this report will be tenaciously pursued, at an official level, in a way that has never happened before.
The second supplier of teeth to this report will be the disability movement itself. Nearly two decades ago, the Disabled Persons' Action Group served notice that people with disabilities were not prepared to see themselves as objects of charity, that they intended to be seen as people with rights.
More recently the Forum of People with Disabilities has taken up that challenge.
The disability movement knows how to use the media, knows how to lobby and can claim credit for the creation of the commission and the council.
A Disability Act is likely to be high on the agenda of the new council and the disability movement. Yesterday's report recommends that such an Act be introduced to implement the anti discrimination provision it wants inserted into the Constitution.
But whether or not such a constitutional change is made - and do not doubt the capacity of the disability movement to get it - there is a great deal that can be done by means of an Act to wring better treatment out of health boards, hospitals, employers, disability organisations, insurance companies, pubs, CIE, and many other sources of discrimination or of additional stress for people with disabilities.
Also high on the agenda will be securing a right to an income for people with disabilities.
Means tested payments with rules which vary from one part of the State to another, payments which can be taken away once a person has spent a certain amount of time in hospital - although the bills may still be rolling in - and the failure of the income support system to take the extra cost of disability into account, are the bane of those who have disabilities. Reform will make a real difference to the lives of many people.
This report marks a major step forward in the determination of the disability movement to push its way on to the centre of the stage in Irish life - and that is a matter of importance to most of us since we can expect to experience either temporary or permanent disability at some time in our lives.