Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

This Bill is a betrayal of the work and hopes of the various people who have worked with disability rights organisations during the past ten or 15 years. The start of this process was the setting up of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities and its sizeable report, A Strategy for Equality. That commission was set up in 1993 at a time when there was a Minister and Department with full and specific responsibility for equality. The Minister was Mervyn Taylor of the Labour Party, in a Fianna Fáil-Labour Government. That there was such a Department says much about what has happened since because now there is no Department of equality but a Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Clearly equality has gone down the list of priorities. That commission said, among other things, there should be rights-based disability legislation and that was the intention of the people at the time. Many of those people were brought together recently in the Mansion House, including Mr. Justice Flood, who was chairman of the commission. They reiterated their views on what disability legislation should contain. Mervyn Taylor introduced equality legislation but it had to be reintroduced because certain constitutional issues arose. Deputy Mary Wallace introduced the first Disability Bill when she was Minister of State in the Department. It is worth recalling that before that Bill was introduced, a conference was held in Dublin on 3 December 2001, called Get Our Act Together. It was organised by a number of disability groups and was addressed by Deputy Mary Wallace. Proposals for disability legislation were discussed.

The disability groups have been working together to create disability legislation appropriate to the needs of people with disabilities, which will put them in control of their lives. Rights legislation will facilitate those with disabilities to control their own lives and bring them to the point from where the rest of us start in terms of education, health, housing. It is to provide for their needs and give them the start needed to help them participate in employment as Deputy Tony Dempsey said. We must be aware of their rights, as opposed to giving them whatever the system decides can be afforded. They want the power to control their own lives.

When the Bill was published in early 2002, the disability groups expected it to contain the rights that had been discussed at the conference. However, a section of the Bill stipulated that a person could not seek redress in the courts when looking for his or her rights. There was a sense of disbelief that following all the talking, representations and promises, the Bill did not reflect what they had expected and had been led to expect.

I refer to two individuals from my constituency. Ger South, who will be known to anyone involved in the disability sector, has consistently campaigned over many years on this issue. John Ryan, who is recently deceased, attended and participated in all these conferences. We are letting people down when we do not produce the rights-based legislation they were led to expect. That Bill was withdrawn and the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Wallace, lost her position. She did no worse than what has been done in the case of the current legislation and yet both Deputies Fahey and O'Dea are well ensconced in their ministerial positions. The reason may be that people have been worn down and have realised they may have to amend the existing legislation or otherwise wait years for what they expected to get in a rights-based Bill. Up to recently, people expected more than they have been given.

The disability legislation consultation group produced the report on proposals for core elements of disability legislation. It highlighted the need for an independent assessment of disability needs, the need for a statement of needs and the right to services. Those provisions are not in the Bill. Those rights are circumscribed by available resources, by the Minister for Finance and all sorts of curtailments. The appeals system is contained within the health board system. I challenge Deputy Tony Dempsey's statement that persons have the right of redress to the courts. They only have the right to go to court on a point of law and technical questions of interpretation in accordance with section 19 of the Bill. They do not have the right to go to court to seek redress for their needs.

I refer to an article written by Gerard Quinn, professor of law in NUI Galway, who may be known to the Minister of State, Deputy Fahey. Gerard Quinn has been a consistent campaigner for the rights of people with disabilities for over ten years. He also spoke at the conference to which I referred. He writes about the reasons the Human Rights Commission has problems with this Bill. The commission is of the opinion that there is no progressive achievement of socio-economic rights in the Bill. He states in the article, "the tap of resources can be turned on or off, or up or down." I acknowledge good funding was allocated in the recent budget but there is no guarantee of this continuing in the future and therefore no future right for people to have their needs addressed.

The second point made in the article is, "there is also an international legal obligation to secure a floor of rights and services beneath which people should never be allowed to fall. And yet this safety net or floor is absent from the Bill." He also makes a point about the right to redress in the courts. He states, "In this light, the courts seem left with gums not teeth." In an effort to include some rights-based provisions in the Bill he states:

An opportunity still exists to give statutory expression to the international legal ideal of "progressive achievement" and to place a floor of provision beneath people. It should be grasped in keeping with the spirit of the budget. To do this we need to take our international legal obligations seriously and to be unafraid to resume the political high ground we had on the issue in the 1990s.

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