Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

Okay, well his posterior then. He has not bothered to turn up here to play any role in legislation for which, ultimately, he will be responsible, being the Minister with responsibility for equality issues, supposedly. Those were cheap shots from the junior Minister about the contributions by Members.

We all have a huge raft of legislation to deal with and play a role in that respect in various different ways. I welcome the contributions made by most Opposition members who have turned up, taken an interest and played some role. The contributions of some Opposition members lasted a few minutes and those of others were longer. However, considerable work has gone on in the background with Members having met representatives of disability groups who put forward suggestions to me and others to ensure this Bill would have judicable rights and that it would be rights based, but that is not what we have.

The level of the Minister of State's commitment to this Bill is shown by the fact that he turned up an hour and a half before we finally signed off on this Bill and announced to the world that he has had another meeting and will introduce further changes. If that is the case, why did the Government not lift the proposal to guillotine the Bill this morning to enable the Minister of State to produce amendments to that effect and allow us at least to debate them here? He did not do that. Why did he not propose to recommit the Bill to facilitate a proper debate and allow Members to see the ink, so to speak, that is required to back up the statement he made?

With regard to the amendments before us, as I said earlier, if we start from a low base, it is easy to make provision. However, we tried to start at a higher level. We started with the definition of disability which is already included in legislation. We have tried to ensure there would be no restriction on people with disabilities to secure their rights in terms of this legislation. If there are restrictions to the complaints procedures, they must be lifted. It is not myself or the other Opposition Members who will seek to secure those rights, hopefully in the near future, although we may at some stage, but we have friends, family members, colleagues and associates who will seek to secure them.

If the Minister of State had taken time to note what the Human Rights Commission said in this regard, he would note that they called for the Bill to provide effective remedies in terms of enforcements. It also sought that there be no explicit or unambiguous means to challenge the contents of an assessment. It based that proposal on remedies. It quoted from the committee which was dealing with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stated:

It is sometimes suggested that matters involving the allocation of resources should be left to the political authorities rather than the courts. While the respective competences of the various branches of government must be respected, it is appropriate to acknowledge that courts are generally already involved in a considerable range of matters which have important resource implications.

The adoption of rigid classification of economic, social and cultural rights which puts them, by definition, beyond the reach of the courts would thus be arbitrary and incompatible with the principle that the two sets of human rights [civil and political and economic, social and cultural] are indivisible and interdependent.

The Human Rights Commission put forward three questions on this aspect for us to deal with when discussing and measuring the scope of this legislation. I will deal with its second question. It asked "Are there barriers to the various levels of complaints and appeals provided for under the Bill?" Up to now there have been barriers. In terms of this small number of amendments, we have tried to lift some of those barriers. The Minister of State has not taken them on board. He is not listening to us, the disability legislation consultation group, the Human Rights Commission, the Equality Authority or to many others who made points on the definition of "disability", the need for rights based legislation and the need for judicial and civil rights. Those concerned sought minor changes to the complaints procedure which would have had a major impact in terms of the result. The Minister of State can come in and make——

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