Chairperson’s Introduction

It was my great honour to be appointed Chairperson of NCBI on 15th April, having served on the Board as Vice Chairperson since 2006, and as a Board member from 1984. I must convey the Board’s sincere thanks to my predecessor Henry Tierney for his many years of dedicated service as Chairman and to thank him for his guidance over the last 18 years in the role as our chairman.

2008 was a significant year of change and achievement for NCBI. The “boom years”, which enabled us to ex-pand the reach of our services, are coming to a close for now and we must adapt to ensure that we can oper-ate just as successfully in a changed environment. They will be difficult times - but we have been here before. NCBI was founded in 1931, so the boom years of the Celtic Tiger are only a very short part of our 77-year his-tory, during which we have experienced, and overcome, many difficult times.

I began my work with NCBI as a volunteer in theWicklow Branch in 1971 so I have witnessed first hand the social and structural changes this organisation has been through during that time.The one thing that remains unchanged is the dedication of our volunteer network and our staff, something that has always set NCBI apart and equips us well for the challenges ahead.

2008 saw NCBI enter the second year of our five-year period covered by the strategic plan (2007–2012). The strategy set out six goals on service delivery, collaboration, research, accessibility, advocacy and profession-alism, the achievement of which will help us to fulfil our mission of enabling people who are blind or vision im-paired to overcome the barriers that impede their independence and participation in society. While these goals lead to an ambitious programme of improvements, progress was made in relation to each during the year, as you will see from the review of the year and also from the services report included.

NCBI was pleased to inaugurate the concept of vision impaired agencies working together, and we threw our weight behind the development of the Vision Impaired Service Providers Alliance (VISPA). VISPA will enable NCBI to be involved in valuable partnerships with other like-minded organisations and to publish important research on sight loss, looking at both the current situation in Ireland and projections into the future.

As well as being an important key activity in the collaboration and research goals, the formation of VISPA and the publication of the ‘Eyes on the Future’ report (in October) also fed into our advocacy and service delivery goals, as this valuable report enables the agency to plan targeted services for future service users, to inform public opinion and to support policy formulation in the area of services around sight loss.

I would like to conclude by thanking the staff, our donors and volunteers, whose energy and dedication contin-ues to be a vital asset to the organisation. I also extend my thanks to my fellow Board members who each make an invaluable contribution by bringing to our collective deliberations, expertise from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Margaret McDowell
Chairperson