Disability groups cautious over long-awaited bill

THE long-awaited and controversial Disability Bill will finally be published tomorrow after a delay of close to three years.

First published in December 2001, the bill was hastily withdrawn by the Government after it received severe criticism from the disability sector for failing to guarantee any of the rights it was claiming to offer.

Although the new version of the bill is understood to offer a form of access to the courts in order to guarantee rights, disability campaigners and groups last night remained cautious.

National Association for the Mentally Handicapped of Ireland (NAMHI) general secretary Deirdre Carroll said she was unsure how far the Government would go.

"We haven't seen anything yet. We're glad the time has finally arrived after two years and nine months. Hopefully, the public attention given to the issue will make the Government more cautious this time," she said.

However Ms Carroll warned that any resources put behind the bill would have to be substantial to address the huge inequalities suffered by the disabled.

"The ESRI report on poverty last week highlighted the small amount spent on social protection on people with disabilities. It was one of the lowest in Europe and we must look at the bill in that context too," she said.

Other groups, including the National Disability Authority, have also warned that a commitment to include an assessment of needs in the new legislation must be backed up by measures to ensure those needs are met and accompanied by adequate funding to do so.

The minister responsible for the bill, Willie O'Dea, has already indicated that a commitment to multi-annual funding for the bill's implementation has been secured from the Department of Finance.

And tomorrow's bill is understood to include a three-pronged approach to guaranteeing rights culminating in a proposed tribunal system.

After a person's needs are assessed independently, a formal statement of those needs will be drafted and any need then provided for.

If still unhappy, a person could then go before a statutory tribunal run by the Department of Social and Family Affairs and onwards to the circuit courts if needs are still not met.

But speaking at the weekend Labour leader Pat Rabbitte predicted the bill would be "entirely devoid of any commitment to rights."

"Publication will be accompanied by a public relations barrage about extra money for the disability sector. A sector that has been starved of resources in recent years, to the point where most service providers have profound difficulties in dealing with extreme emergencies, will be bludgeoned into welcoming a bill that will fall far short of what people with disabilities have been promised for their long-term futures," he said.