It’s time for Bertie to turn Olympic inspiration into practical progress

By Ronan Mullen

There was time enough for two members of the Defence Forces, volunteers for the duration of the Games, to take out hurleys and belt a sliotar up and down the field.

Lads from Longford and Louth don't often get to play hurling in Croke Park. And Saturday night was that kind of evening. It was a triumph for artistic expression and for voluntary spirit. It was a night when ordinary people did extraordinary things.

How apt, too, that the most inspirational speeches of the night came from older people from a woman of 82 and a man of 85.

Here you had a meeting of the old and the young, the representatives of the modern artistic and confident Ireland teaming up with older champions of freedom and human rights to celebrate time-honoured values of hospitality and respect for others.

Bono combined with Nelson Mandela to underline the message that the human spirit is stronger than any disability. But Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the real star of the show.

Her speech was reminiscent of a famous presidential inauguration 43 years ago, when her brother John F Kennedy used memorable phrases to tell the world that the torch had been passed to a new generation.

"To that world that has known so much fear and division in recent years, let it know what you seek here in Ireland," Shriver urged.

"If you seek joy, come see the Special Olympians. If you seek peace and understanding, come see the athletes of Special Olympics. And if you seek courage, or skill or strength, you come see the athletes of Special Olympics."

It was a timely message for a country in which many people are deeply unhappy, despite modern comforts and an unprecedented measure of personal freedom.

According to an international report published in the latest issue of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, almost one in three women living in Dublin suffers from depression.

Professor Patricia Casey, Professor of Psychiatry in UCD and one of the report's authors, says that difficulties in getting practical help and having nobody to confide in were important predictors of depressive disorder among the women surveyed.

And a key factor affecting the mental health of Dublin women is "the combination of negative things happening and not having the social support when they do happen."

The Special Olympics have done this country a major service because they are all about community and social support the very things we need to combat our new unhappiness.

In recent weeks people all over Ireland have put themselves out to extend a warm welcome to the Olympians.

While the events are taking place in urban areas, the welcoming programme took place predominantly in rural towns, where the strong bonds of community allowed for greater hospitality.

Maybe we are seeking happiness in the wrong place. We live in a world which is very focused on the acquisition of rights.

Yet the message we learned on Saturday night was that a world in which there was only rights, and no love, would be a very poor place indeed.

It was charity, in the broadest sense of that word which means love, that made Saturday night so special. It was the charity to be seen in the rich, deep smiles of the Special Olympians themselves, and the charity of Shriver herself, the founder of the Games.

How ironic that one of the more unknown of the Kennedy siblings should be the one who, in her lifetime, did most to change the world for the better.

Yet there is no love without justice. Attitudes must change throughout our society if the high emotion of Saturday night is to translate into a better quality of life for people with physical and intellectual disabilities.

Even as we celebrate the lives of people with Down Syndrome and other conditions, there is a worrying trend in our society to see such people as a problem, a burden on resources, rather than as people with their own gifts who can enrich society in their own way. Some of these attitudes stem from medical practice.

The Rotunda Hospital will now provide antenatal screening and amniocentesis to expectant mothers who want to know if their baby will have an abnormality.

The much-trumpeted upside of amniocentesis is that it helps parents prepare for the birth of a child with disability. Maybe so.

But international studies suggest that amniocentesis may undermine women's control over their decision-making processes.

Many women do not get enough information about the risk which the process itself poses to the baby.

Some feel pressurised firstly into having an amniocentesis, and then into having an abortion when their unborn child is diagnosed with a disability.

One textbook being used by Irish medical students talks of children with Down Syndrome in purely negative terms and casually mentions the "option of termination of pregnancy" after amniocentesis.

All this speaks for itself. As a result, there are places abroad where you rarely see children with Down Syndrome these days.

Are parents coming under cultural pressure to abort children with disabilities? Undoubtedly.

However, in Ireland at least, the more immediate problem is the lack of education and health care available to those living with disability.

Children with Down Syndrome, for example, do not even have an automatic right to a medical card, although their medical needs (heart, bowel, visual and hearing difficulties) can be great.

They are denied essential services like speech therapy, counselling, early intervention and respite care because, we are told, the funding and the people are not available.

Only around 25 speech therapists qualify in Ireland each year. The government's promise to provide for 175 extra places each year has not yet materialised.

The real problem is not the absence of funding but the way resources have been used, argues Paul Daly, CEO of Down Syndrome Ireland.

"Before last year's election Bertie Ahern said there were 20,000 more people working in the health service, of whom 4,000 of these were nurses and doctors. How many were administrators?"

The educational system is particularly inflexible towards people with learning disabilities, Daly argues.

"Children with Down Syndrome may learn at a slower pace than other children but can make very significant progress and become high achievers. Some lead very

independent lives and have responsible jobs. But they must be allowed develop this potential."

Currently, the state is not obliged to provide education to people after the age of 18 and, as Daly puts it, there is little by way of special provision for the early education of children with learning disability.

"Very often, the quality of their education is only as good as the willingness of the local teacher to make proper efforts on their behalf."

In the light of this, it is perhaps not surprising that we have seen no legislation for the rights of people with disabilities before the Special Olympics.

Bertie Ahern says we should all visit at least one Special Olympics event this week. Well spoken, Taoiseach.

But your words will ring very hollow if your government does nothing to advance the cause of Special Olympians when the show leaves town.