Irish Examiner view: State’s ongoing failure a scandal

Disabled driving

Terms like 'shameful, unfair, unacceptable' combine to offer a scathing indictment of the State’s ongoing failure to help those with disabilities. Picture: Larry Cummins

If rhetoric is a consideration elsewhere in this section, in the context of retrofitting homes, it is no less important when considering the 2022 report of Ombudsman Ger Deering, which was published this week.

In assessing the performance of various State agencies and associated bodies the Ombudsman’s office must make assessments of the efficiency and capabilities of those organisations, and the rhetoric from that office this week was blunt regarding the lack of access to personal transport supports for people with disabilities.

Terms like “shameful, unfair, unacceptable” combine to offer a scathing indictment of the State’s ongoing failure to help those with disabilities, and Deering made a telling point when he said: “All too often in this country we look back at shameful things that have happened in the past and wonder how such things could have happened... Sadly, we do not appear to have learned from the past.”

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The evidence produced buttresses those points. When the Motorised Transport Grant was closed in February 2013 the Government of the day promised to replace it, but nothing has happened. The Ombudsman’s office has itself been seeking reform for a dozen years in this area.

The extraordinary neglect of this sector is one element in this story — the ability of successive governments to sidestep their responsibilities when it comes to a vulnerable cohort of society is shocking in and of itself, because it reveals a cold reality behind the lip service paid to those with disabilities in Irish society. 

This state of affairs will not come as a surprise to anyone with first-hand experience of the support systems available to those who require additional supports, of course; on the contrary, it will be depressing familiar.

But it is also an example of discrimination so plain and obvious that it might as well be enshrined as a dictionary definition: The fundamental unfairness in the treatment of those with disabilities should be a matter of shame for those charged with providing the appropriate services.

It might be more fruitful, however, for those suffering the lack of those services to bring this situation to the attention of an organisation such as the European Court of Human Rights.