Thanks for your kindness to us, but fear for your right to speak out

FIRST of all, I hope you won’t mind if I use this space to say thank you to the literally hundreds of people who wrote, telephoned and e-mailed my missus and me after the piece we wrote in the Irish Examiner last week.

I'm fairly clear now that there isn't just goodwill towards people with disabilities, there's a growing conviction that Ireland can and should do a lot more.

The encouragement we received has been reflected in the support and encouragement shown by the people of Ireland towards the Games themselves and towards the ethos behind them.

The Irish Examiner led the way in channelling that support into a coherent demand for rights and recourse. Now that the issue is firmly on the agenda, you can bet it's not going to be allowed to be forgotten.

It will take me a little while to sort out all the emotions I feel after one of the most invigorating and inspiring weeks of my life, so I'm not going to write about the subject this week.

I do intend to come back to the subject before the Taoiseach's promised meeting with the disability groups, because I feel strongly that the opportunity now exists to break through the final barrier. We don't need any tricks or sleight of hand, and we don't need any propaganda applied to this issue.

And some people can't help themselves. Already, for example, there's a line coming out from government circles to suggest that the ombudsman idea I floated here last week is in some sense unworkable. That can only be based on a misinterpretation of what I said (presumably not deliberate).

I don't see an ombudsman as a substitute for rights, but as a possible vehicle for helping to enforce rights, backed up by the last-resort recourse to the courts that people must have if rights are going to be meaningful.

Indeed, I believe it is essential that any authority that is setting out to undo years of neglect of people with disabilities (and an ombudsman is only one name for such an authority) must have the power to initiate legal action themselves, as well as the power to represent, advocate, investigate, enforce standards, and provide meaningful redress in cases where rights are ignored. Anything less than that would be window-dressing.

The other piece of mythology that the government would like to foist on us is that if you give people rights, the only outcome is a goldmine for lawyers. I heard the Minister for Justice, for example, scornfully telling us all on radio during the week that the legal costs associated with the Jamie Sinnott judgement in the Supreme Courts amounted to 1.6 million. He forgot to mention that it was he, as Attorney General, who had dragged Jamie and his mother, Katherine, into the Supreme Court. They didn't appeal against a High Court judgement he did. And he said afterwards that he had done it to save the taxpayers of Ireland from the appalling vista that would have opened up if an autistic man was given a right to the sort of lifelong education he desperately needs.

The bottom line in all of this is that, no matter how much goodwill there is in people's hearts, if you don't believe in some basic rights for people with disabilities, you believe in charity. Not good enough, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I said I wasn't going to write about this subject this week though when I get started I find it hard to stop! Instead I wanted to say a few words about another constitutional right we all have, and indeed have taken for granted for years, the right to free expression. It's under some threat, and nobody seems to have noticed.

"The State guarantees liberty for the exercise of the following rights, subject to public order and morality: The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions." That's what the Constitution says, in Article 40.

There are some qualifications, but in essence we all have the absolute right to express ourselves reasonably responsibly. That right applies to you. If you want to stand on an upturned crate in the main street of your town, and spell out all the reasons you think the government should be thrown out of office, you have a perfect right to do so.

If you want to put it in print and circulate it all around the place, that's your right, too. I might fundamentally disagree with every word you have to say, but I cannot interfere with your right to say it.

But suppose I told you that we were going to set up a committee, and that I would be appointing all the members, and that committee would in future vet all your opinions, and investigate complaints against you. Furthermore I was going to give the committee the right to adjudicate on your opinions and to compel you to make reparation for any opinion you expressed that was considered offensive by my committee.

What would you think of that idea? Where would you think you were living? Well, that's what we are proposing to do with newspapers and oddly, the newspapers haven't said too much about it yet. Recently, the Minister for Justice published a report called the Report of the Legal Advisory Group On Defamation, and invited public comment on it before "finalising" policy. But attached to the report was what they call the Heads of a Bill a detailed outline of proposed legislation, essentially describing what a statutory Press Council would do, how it would be composed, and so on.

Now, I've had my own runs-in with newspapers over the years, and I would be strongly of the view that a newspaper which does someone wrong should be prepared to put that right immediately. I also believe that the attitude of newspapers to personal privacy leaves a lot to be desired.

But this proposed new legislation is frightening. The Press Council envisaged would be entirely appointed by the Government and would have a statutory base. It would have limited independence but sweeping powers. It would be responsible for the maintenance of journalistic standards, including the drawing up of a code of conduct. It would investigate complaints, and impose recommendations about redress on newspapers.

In effect, it would constitute a system where a government-appointed committee was regulating the content of newspapers. How anyone could regard that as consistent with any definition of freedom of expression is beyond me.

But what I find truly astonishing is that the government should publish such a report without any comment whatever and indeed that the reaction of the media should be so muted. Perhaps no-one has had a chance yet to look at the proposed Bill, although it's on the Department of Justice website. If we accept, even in principle, that any Government-appointed committee should be given a statutory right to regulate the freedom of expression, we are on a very slippery slope indeed. There have been times in history, and there are many parts of the world still, where media control is a key political issue. For God's sake let it not happen by stealth here.