People with disabilities ‘must fight against cuts’

PEOPLE with disabilities may have to take to the streets in the same numbers as older people to highlight the relentless cuts being made to their payments and services, the head of a national cross-disability organisation said yesterday.

Donie O’Leary, national chairman of People with Disabilities in Ireland, said the older generation had been heeded after more than 15,000 people, mostly pensioners, protested outside the Dáil in October 2008 over the withdrawal of the universal medical card for the over 70s.

Around 400,000 people in Ireland — one in 10 of the population — have some form of disability.