350,000 of our citizens are denied basic rights

WE need to establish basic rights for the disabled. Hundreds of people are in need of day-care facilities.

Thousands with physical disabilities do not benefit from day activity or development programmes.

People with disabilities, their families, advocates or carers should not have to spend every day fighting an uphill battle. People should not have to take to the streets or to the courts to demonstrate that they have a right to day care, respite care, education and training.

More than 350,000 people in Ireland have a disability. For too long, justifiable expectations of equal access and equal rights have not been met. When rights are acknowledged they must be universally applied.

We have failed our people with disabilities and, in the process, seriously damaged society.

How much talent has been wasted because people with disabilities have not been given the opportunities and means to develop their gifts?

Cllr Noel Collins,

‘St Jude’s,’

Midleton,

Co Cork.