Let’s remember Bertie’s promises during Olympic opening ceremony

SO, we’re nearly there. The Games will begin next Saturday, with a spectacle capable of being enjoyed around the world.

At the climax of the opening ceremony, our Taoiseach will be surrounded on the stage in Croke Park by some of the leading personalities, celebrities and sports people of the world. The sort of people who will gather there will ensure that the TV pictures will be transmitted all over the globe.

It will be the photo opportunity of a lifetime for the Taoiseach. It will be one of the highlights of his career, shown in future years whenever there is a need to look back on the achievements of this two-term leader of Fianna Fáil. The peace process, the Good Friday agreement, the first political leader for years and years to be re-elected, and the Special Olympics in Ireland.

In fairness to the Taoiseach, he has been active in support of the Games since the very beginning. I believe he is entitled to a place of honour at the opening ceremony. But is he entitled to a place of honour in the real legacy of the Games?

Throughout Ireland, the success of the Games is already clear. There is a new awareness, and with it a considerable degree of generosity, a recognition that not nearly enough has been done in the past. There is widespread support throughout the community for doing something now that will put the position of people with disabilities on a new level.

People can see for themselves. The protest outside the Dáil last week, because of cutbacks in an era of plenty, because of the delay in bringing rights forward. The humbling story from St Brigid's in Ballinasloe, where people with learning disability still live in the limbo of entirely inappropriate surroundings. Everyone not just people with disabilities and their families feels increasingly angry at what are obvious injustices.

Everybody feels uncomfortable that we will be showing the world how good we are where disability is concerned, while in different corners of our country situations still exist of which, when we stop to think about it, we are thoroughly ashamed.

Everywhere I go, people are talking about these incongruities. They can't understand why our Government appears to be the only group of people who can't see the injustice, who are prepared to celebrate the achievements and welcome the world, and still brush our own problems under the rug.

Last year the Government took a conscious decision when they decided to screw down public spending. They decided there would be no exceptions. No matter how much the need, how great the distress, how many the promises that had been made if the necessary approach to intellectual disability required public spending, the answer would be the same as given to everyone. Tough cheese.

Where people with disabilities have really lost out is in the fact that they don't have big incomes. We know as a matter of fact that if our Taoiseach and his Minister for Finance think a problem can be solved with a tax break, it's no problem at all. But people with disabilities tend (for reasons of poverty) not to pay tax, so tax breaks won't solve anything. Because tax breaks are no use to them, and public spending solutions are ruled out, they just have to wait in ever-lengthening queues.

The Government has been unbending in the face of all protest. People with disabilities got the crumbs from the rich man's table during the period of high growth. They became (once again) discretionary and expendable when it was necessary to tighten up.

And now it seems that the Taoiseach and the Government are going to welch on the one commitment that would have changed that situation for the better, once and for all. They are preparing to welch on their commitment to rights-based legislation. Only a couple of weeks ago, in their so-called Progress Report, the Government repeated again the promise they have made to legislate. And this is not an election promise this was contained in the Programme for Government agreed between FF and the PDs after the election:

"We will complete consultations on the Disabilities Bill and will bring the amended bill through the Oireachtas and include provisions for rights of assessment, appeals, provision and enforcement."

In reporting progress on this commitment, the report went on to say, "[the] consultation process is completed and the new Bill will be published as soon as possible."

Within days of publishing that as part of the Progress Report, the Taoiseach had to tell the Dáil that basically he didn't know when the Disability Bill would be published.

Meanwhile, government ministers and junior ministers are going around the place telling people that if legally enforceable rights were introduced, everyone would end up in court, and the money would be going to lawyers rather than services.

This is one of the big lies that will be told with increasing frequency to justify the abandonment of rights. Another is that people with disabilities are looking for "superior rights" to everyone else. And a third is that the introduction of some kind of unlimited set of rights would essentially bankrupt the country.

The truth about these lies is simple enough.

First, there is no reason why legally enforceable rights, provided they're taken seriously, should be a bonanza for lawyers. The experts who have (unanimously) advised the Government to introduce a rights-based bill have argued that there should be recourse to the Ombudsman and to the Equality Authority if it is necessary to secure redress.

Secondly, people with disabilities aren't looking for superior rights. They are looking for basic rights, such as the right to an independent assessment of their disability and the needs arising from it. To suggest that a group of people who have been treated as second-class citizens for generations are now demanding to be treated in some superior way, when all they want is to catch up, is to add insult and irony to injury.

Thirdly, will it bankrupt the country to give a vulnerable section of our community some clearly defined rights? You know, that's exactly what they said when they were faced with the demand to introduce a whole set of rights to end inequality against women, back in the 1970s.

In fact the Department of Finance then succeeded in delaying the implementation of equality for women for several years, because of this fear that it would be the end of civilisation as we knew it. And guess what? Rights were introduced eventually, and rather than collapsing, the country went from strength to strength.

Don't listen to the propaganda. None of the messages they are trying to send out to justify the refusal to publish a bill of rights for people with disabilities is true. There is no legal, moral, administrative or economic reason to justify any further delay. There is only mean-spiritedness.

Remember this when you see our Taoiseach at the opening ceremony. He has promised legally enforceable rights, verbally and in writing. If he intends to deliver his promise, he is welcome at the Games, as far as I'm concerned. If he doesn't, he is there under false pretences, and he should be ashamed of himself.