It is an issue that affects 600,000 people and their families across all 40 constituencies. Yet if you look back across the 22 days of the campaign, it barely got a mention, writes Conor McMorrow of RTÉ's Political Staff.
It featured in few radio or television debates and filled few column inches.
While the size of the fiscal space, the fate of the Special Criminal Court, crime, opinion polls and ‘Castlebar’s whingers' dominated an unremarkable campaign, disability issues garnered little attention.
Gary Lee, director of the Centre for Independent Living in Dublin, a disability organisation governed by people with disabilities, says there is great disappointment among disability activists as the campaign comes to an end.
He said: "We are disappointed that disability did not become an issue in this election. As expected, the economy dominated the debate but crime also surfaced.
"It wasn’t a huge surprise that disability was not really an issue in the campaign but it is disappointing. There are 600,000 people in the country who have disabilities and it is a wonder that it is not a bigger issue.
"We tried to make it an issue as there has been a dual attack on people in terms of income and services. We tried to highlight disability issues by getting individual stories out there on the Disability Federation of Ireland’s 'Disable Inequality' campaign website," he said.
Mr Lee outlined that, according to the CSO, there are 595,335 people in Ireland with disabilities.
A further 187,112 are unpaid carers. There are 57,000 people receiving carers' allowance so by "adding these figures together, we get almost 20% of the population", he said.
Disappointed that the issue did not gain traction in Election 2016, Mr Lee has mixed views on how the party manifestos addressed disability issues.
Mr Lee said: "The manifestos were interesting. The Fine Gael and Labour manifestos were disappointing. They did not go far enough. We were campaigning for personal assistant legislation so there would be statutory basis for personal assistants.
"People would have the right to be assessed for it and then they would be allotted with assessed hours.
"Fianna Fáil put it in their manifesto and we welcome that. The Sinn Féin manifesto was quite strong as well," Mr Lee said.
As the election campaign finishes today, the attention of groups like the Centre for Independent Living in Dublin will turn to "stepping up our lobbying to make sure the stuff in manifestos makes it into the programme for government".
"It is cheap enough to put something into a manifesto but following through on that is even more important," he added.
As the negotiations on forming a new coalition and agreeing on a new programme for government unfold in the weeks ahead, it will be hoped that disability issues get more consideration than they appeared to get in the election campaign.
