Disability rights and wrongs now at the tender mercy of the Taoiseach
No agenda has been sent out, and the DLCG has been asked to nominate one member from each of its constituent organisations to attend the meeting. What does this mean? At the same time, the Department of Health has written to a number of organisations in the disability movement, telling them that they propose to undertake a major "strategic review" of policies and priorities over the next 15 months.
This "review" will involve revisiting a wide number of already-published documents, with a view to arriving at a fresh set of priorities for policy in the future. What does this mean? The Disability Legislation Consultative Group was established at the request of the Government, and asked to consult throughout the disability movement on what should be in the Disability Bill promised by the Government. The Taoiseach has already met the DLCG several times. After their last meeting (just after the Special Olympics) statements were issued on all sides expressing great satisfaction. The Taoiseach was committed to rights-based legislation, and work was proceeding on that basis.
Since that meeting, however, the omens have been bad. Various junior ministers as well as the Taoiseach himself have said that the rights in the new bill would be subject to available staff and resources.
The ESRI was commissioned (by the Government) to study legislative provision in other jurisdictions, and came up with a finding that the model being demanded in Ireland (by the disability movement) didn't exist anywhere.
They went on to say that it would represent considerable progress if everyone agreed that Ireland should approach the issue of disability rights on a progressive and incremental basis.
To anyone who had been involved in the debate, the ESRI report seemed to have a number of fundamental flaws.
It compared a very bald (many would say distorted) version of the "disability demand" with legislation in other countries. But more to the point, the report concentrated throughout on the "demand" from the disability movement.
It never mentioned the commitments made by the Government. This is not too surprising, perhaps, considering that the Government commissioned the report. But it is worth remembering nevertheless exactly what this Government is committed to.
It's on page 27 of the programme for government. It says: "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."
That's four separate rights. There is only one meaning that can be attached to that promise, and it's this the Government has promised people with disabilities that it will provide, in law, so that each of them will have a right to an assessment of the needs they have arising from their disability, the right to appeal if they don't agree with the assessment, the right to services arising from the assessment, and the right to secure redress if those services aren't provided.
It is the right to services arising from the assessment the word "provision" in the programme for government that has caused the trouble ever since. Almost since the day they entered into that commitment in the programme for government, Fianna Fáil and the PDs have been horrified at the thought of what they entered into. It doesn't cost much to give a right to an assessment or an appeal. But it will cost money to give someone a right to services they need.
At the moment, if you have a disability and you need, say, speech therapy, you enter a queue a never-ending queue in the case of that need. And you remain in that queue precisely because you have no right to speech therapy it is supplied only to the extent that it is available. The fact that the absence of speech therapy robs you of an ability to communicate and learn, and robs the rest of the community of a citizen who can contribute, doesn't matter.
The promise of the Disability Bill was that it would replace the queue with rights. The fear of the Government is that people who have rights sometimes demand that they be respected. Horror of horrors! Sometime in the last few years, someone could have sat down with the disability movement and said, "look, we're committed to rights but it's going to cost money, and it's going to take time to put the services and infrastructure in place.
"Can we agree a plan, say over three or five years, that will enable us to make the investment in an affordable and manageable way?"
That's what they would have done with anyone else in society.
Instead, we've had this endless process of "consultation" and conditioning, preparing us all for a Disability Bill that will fall short in the one vital respect. It will pay lip service to rights, but the queues will remain, and there will be no obligation on anyone to shorten them.
Perhaps I'm wrong. The Taoiseach is on record in the Dáil that he would consult the disability movement when the bill was ready, and perhaps that is all that Friday's meeting is about. Perhaps he is going to propose a bill and a plan to give it teeth.
The meeting with the DLCG is scheduled, as I said, late on Friday afternoon, and won't be over before 6 o'clock. It's traditionally regarded as the worst possible time to make news Saturday's and indeed Sunday's papers are effectively full at that stage, except for major breaking news stories. So if the DLCG wanted to publicise the outcome of the meeting, they'll find it very hard. If they come out of the meeting with the strong feeling that the Government has ditched a rights-based bill, will there be anyone there to listen to them? And if the Taoiseach lets it be known over the next few days that he has consulted the DLCG as he promised, and they seemed happy enough, will there be anyone able to contradict him? Perhaps I'm wrong about that too. Friday, after all, is the last working day in November, and maybe the Taoiseach is only squeezing the meeting in so he can honour his promise of consultation within the month.
But it all looks too coincidental: all these negative speeches over the last few months; the announcement of a "strategic review" of services by the Department of Health; the publication of a less than supportive report by the ESRI; and now a sudden, no-agenda meeting with the Taoiseach.
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that what the disability movement is going to be told is that the Government has decided that the real rights needed and promised won't be in the bill but that if the movement accepts a much more limited bill, the Taoiseach will see what he can do for them in the following week's budget. If they step out of line, of course, it will make his job of "looking after them" in the budget much harder. No threat, you understand, just facing practicalities.
I could be totally wrong, of course. Please let me be.
