Disability bill an insult

I'm not an expert on discrimination against people with disabilities. But I know 700 people who are. I sat in the RDS on Tuesday night last and listened to what they had to say. If the members of this Government had done the same, listened, then they could never have produced the insult that is the Disability Bill.

There was ample opportunity for the Government to hear what they and thousands of other people with disabilities and their families have had to say for more than a decade now. They want access to their rights. They want to be valued as equal citizens and participants in Irish society. Instead they got the Disability Bill (Mark II).

The first Bill in 2001 was such a paltry and insulting effort that the Government was forced to go back to the drawing board. The signs were good. The Disability Legislation Consultation Group was set up by the Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, and comprised of representatives from disability organisations to produce a report which would inform the basis of a new disability bill. That report, Equal Citizens, put forward a number of key recommendations all of which are either absent or a pale shadow of what was originally proposed.

Most importantly is the refusal to provide rights-based legislation. This is a disability bill, not a disability rights bill. The Irish Government says there is no such legislation anywhere in the world. The Government is talking out of its backside. USA, UK, Sweden, Finland and New Zealand all have rights-based disability legislation. What disabled people in Ireland got was a rehash of what has gone before and a document filled with more caveats, conditions, limitations and restrictions than rights.

There is no right to services, there is no right of assessment of need, there is no clear, independent appeals system, there is no ring-fencing of resources, there is no recognition of Irish Sign language as an official language. There is no right of access to buildings. There is a definition of disability that is so narrow as to exclude people with multiple sclerosis, AIDS, and many of those who have mental health difficulties amongst others.

In keeping with Minister McDowell's aversion to rights for anyone other than himself, he has not only refused to accord any rights to disabled people in this Bill, he has also used it to erase the last resort and hope that many did have. The Bill withdraws the right to seek redress through the courts to obtain services for disabled individuals.

Consequently, it is in contravention of Ireland's commitment to international standards of law. Don't take that from me, I'm not an expert on international law either but I know a man who is - Maurice Manning, the President of the Irish Human Rights Commission. He chaired the meeting at the RDS on Tuesday last and I listened to him too.

Here is what else I heard. I heard anger, frustration, bewilderment and disgust. I heard articulate analyses of rights and equality, of law and policy. I heard a solid, unified voice of a community that is sick of being treated like a charity case, of being dis-abled by the absence of rights, a community that has been patronised and betrayed but mostly ignored. I heard a community of people who reasonably asked for the progressive realisation of their rights, tire of rejection. I heard a community that has been insulted by constantly being told by a Government that "knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing" that it costs too much to provide them with a right to the services they need. As one speaker from the floor put it, "if we were race horses the money would be found, but I don't have four hooves, I have four wheels".