Denying human rights is not the way to foster the can-do spirit

I WANT to suggest a compromise between what seems like two entrenched positions.

The government has apparently set its face against legally enforceable rights for people with disabilities. The disability movement refuses to rely any more on the promise of charity or goodwill, and is adamant that a culture of rights must replace the broken promises of the past.

A compromise is possible. It mightn't be my place to suggest it, and it is entirely possible that the disability movement mightn't accept it. But we mustn't end the year of people with disabilities without this issue being resolved. After this fortnight, we cannot go back to the way things were.

We know now what people with disabilities can do. We know how they can contribute. We know how they can move and inspire us, leave us breathless even. We know that courage and good humour are possible in the face of any adversity, how what Eunice Kennedy Shriver calls the "unquenchable spirit" of people with disabilities can overcome.

No-one who was present in Croke Park on Saturday night will ever forget the occasion. I don't think I have the words to describe the emotion I felt when the Olympic flame was lit. Everyone I have met since, whether they were there or had watched it on television, was transfixed. There was, and is, a huge degree of pride that Ireland can put on a show like that for the world, that Ireland can make so many people welcome, that Ireland can be so professional when the occasion demands it.

But underneath that there is a strong sense of awareness of what this is all about. Behind the spectacle there was years of preparation. Throughout this week there will be intense hard work by thousands of volunteers, all of them making sacrifices.

Throughout last week and this, thousands of families opened their homes to athletes from all over the world.

They all volunteers, staff, families will have an abiding memory that they have been dealing with people in respect of whom it is a cliché to say that their determination, concentration and courage are second to none. It takes real guts to sit on a horse in competition when you are visually impaired or your limbs don't do what they're told. Swimming two laps of an Olympic-size pool requires considerable determination when one of the symptoms of your disability is a difficulty in controlling breathing. Only the most determined will steer a heavy bowling ball to a strike or a spare when the muscles of your body aren't well co-ordinated.

Most of the athletes who compete this week have been in training for years to get where they are. None of them has started with natural advantages no naturally gifted runners or jumpers, no natural gift of hand-eye co-ordination. Everything they do has been learned with the help of volunteers, learned by doing it again and again. The process of learning is difficult and requires considerable patience on the part of both student and teacher. Progress is often made in the tiniest of increments.

When some of these athletes win medals this week indeed, when some stand proud on the starting line in their events those closest to them will remember a lifetime of hard, intense preparation. Participating in these Games is an achievement against the odds.

It's hard enough to deal with a disability sometimes without being dismissed. Overcoming disability to participate often represents an incredible achievement, but the barriers you have to climb to take part in the Special Olympics can be as nothing compared to the barriers that people with disabilities encounter all their lives.

The current issue of Insight, a disability magazine, features an article by Michael McDowell under the heading "Confronting the rhetoric of rights".

He begins the piece by saying, "It seems to me that personal responsibility is something we have surrendered to a view of the world that implies the individual is owed a duty by someone else.

"I see in this development grave consequences for the future development of our society. Because inherent in such a societal make-up is, in my view, an absence of initiative and enterprise, a diminution of the "can-do" self-reliant spirit, that it characterised by people taking responsibility, rather than expecting there is something owed them."

INHERENT in this argument (which I regard as pompous claptrap, but let's leave that to one side) is the notion that if we go down the slippery slope of rights, we will end up, not with a more equal and participative society, but with a sort of layabout, couldn't-care-less about anything sort of society (like, say, Sweden?).

But the Taoiseach sees it differently. He believes that everyone should have rights, he's all for that, but if they're legally enforceable people will be running to the courts all the time, and all the money will be eaten up by lawyers. He has told us again and again that he's not opposed to rights, but he doesn't see how they can be enforced in a practical sense.

People with disabilities, on the other hand, know only too well that without rights, they will go to the end of every queue. It has been that way for years. In the celtic tiger years, resources were put in not enough, but some; but the moment things became a little slower, the resources were totally cut off. That has been the experience of their lifetimes.

So what rights are they looking for?

The right to an assessment of their condition.

The right to a statement of needs arising from that assessment.

The right to be included in decisions made about them.

The right to basic services that promote dignity.

The right not to always have to wait in a queue.

Does anyone really believe that enshrining such rights in law, for people who have huge barriers to confront, would rob society of its can-do spirit? Does anyone really believe that people with disabilities want to be running to the Four Courts? In case they do, here is one alternative. Put the rights in law. And give people with disability a disability ombudsman instead of a courtroom.

That ombudsman must be entirely independent, appointed by the President on the nomination of the Oireachtas, free to investigate and report in public. He or she must have the power to compel an assessment to be carried out, and the power to represent people with disabilities in their dealings with agencies.

He or she must be an advocate as well as a judge, and the disability ombudsman's office should have the power to establish an advocacy service. In cases of last resort, the ombudsman should have the power to initiate legal proceedings, because there are situations where the exercise of moral authority isn't enough.

A disability ombudsman, with real resources and influence, can be a vehicle for turning the aspiration to rights into reality. And it's not beyond our wit and intelligence to achieve the goal of justice and dignity for people with disabilities.

If this week proves anything, it proves how much they are entitled to that.