Irish Examiner view: Some are more equal than others

ESRI report says just 36% of working age disabled people are in employment, compared to two-thirds of those who are not disabled

Attempts to end discrimination against disabled people have been sporadic and timid. 

“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”

The words of former US vice president Hubert Humphrey and echoed by others, among them the novelist and Nobel laureate Pearl Buck and US president Harry S Truman, who said a society is judged by how it treats its weakest members.