Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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This is not necessarily my area but I want to ask a generalised non-political, perhaps apolitical, question. In certain cases of middle and profound intellectual disability, have we created a kind of rod for our own back by integration? I say that with all the quality in the world. I came from a background of education and as an educationalist - I came to the Seanad as one - but I wonder about this. There is a move from first to second to third level. It is all very well a nephew of mine is profoundly handicapped as we know the path, which is good and qualitative but very limited. The lives become a little more blurred sometimes with what Senator Moran described. There is a sameness. One day we are trying to be the same but the next we are trying to be different. Sometimes we do not know what we are trying to be. We are all trying to be a qualitative human being. I know this is a philosophical educational question but do the witnesses wonder about what we have done that could have been done better? Sometimes people are not allowed speak about integration because there is the idea that it is in some way educationally prejudicial, which I am not at all. It is a question we need to ask as the fall is huge. I do not know what people around the table think but I am asking the philosophical question.