Fergus Finlay: People with disabilities are citizens with rights, not charity cases

Every policymaker and politician in Ireland will deny this vehemently but in policy terms, to this day, people with a disability — especially an intellectual disability — are seen as a burden, a drag, a problem, and often an intractable problem

HSE CEO Bernard Gloster apologised to children and their families over the findings in the Camhs report published last week. File Picture: Leah Farrell

The Irish Examiner really started something last week. The question is: Can we keep it going? Can we finally begin to make a difference?

On Monday, this paper broke the story about proposed cuts in the special needs assistant (SNA) system. The cuts seemed to me to be based on an utterly spurious analysis, and the changes we highlighted caused enormous alarm.