Disability rights – No excuse for delay of legislation
For example, yesterday Mr Justice Feargus Flood and the members of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities met in Dublin to discuss the Government’s delay in publishing satisfactory disability legislation.
It is over ten years since the Commission was established by the then Minister of Equality and Law Reform Mervyn Taylor.
In 1996, it produced a report which recommended, among other things, that a Disabilities Act should be introduced setting out the rights of people with disabilities and establishing a means of redress for those whose rights were denied.
No such legislation has been introduced. To take a cynical view, it reflects the seriousness with which the Government treats the issue that even the pending crucial local and European elections has not prompted such legislation.
The Disability Bill giving expression to the legislation is still awaited, and the fear of those concerned with the rights of, and services for, people with disabilities, is that when it eventually comes to pass, it will fall short of what they expect.
Given the fact that the Government’s last Disability Bill had to be withdrawn before the General Election, those fears are justified.
If the proposed legislation is not based on rights for people with disabilities, enforceable by the courts, or is reticent about providing the necessary funding to provide essential services, then it will be utterly pointless.
It is well beyond the time when the struggle for those rights was consigned to history.
