Health board’s blow to rights of disabled people

I WISH to express my anger at the treatment meted out by the state to the family in Kells, Co Meath, who have struggled for years to provide for the needs of four autistic children.

That a health board would consider punishing parents who agitate for proper provision for their children by imprisoning those children in institutions represents a new Orwellian low in the response of the state to citizens who demand rights for their disabled dependents.

For years in this country children were forcibly removed from their parents and sent to state-sanctioned institutions. Various inquiries, tribunals and redress boards are only now trying to right those wrongs.