Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 620 commitments in the programme for Government. I could take the Taoiseach through the commitments as other Teachtaí have done, pointing out where he has torn them up. However, what is more important is the vision of the programme. What are its core values?

I believe citizens have fundamental rights - the right to a wraparound health service, to a home, to a clean environment, to a job, as well as a real republic of this century. I also believe one should not be a lesser citizen because one has disabilities. Whatever about the Government’s intentions, however, the fact is that if one has a disability, one is not really a citizen. On Friday, by chance, I met two families, both with children with Down’s syndrome who had been denied medical cards. One of them was a three year old girl, Lillie. She still cannot walk, talk, swallow or eat solids. She is prone, as children with Down’s syndrome are, to sickness, but she has no medical card. This week the mother of a very good friend of mine, Donnacha Rynne, a wonderful young man with profound disabilities from Miltown Malbay, had a letter in The Irish Times, decrying the fact that her son could not get a wheelchair, while someone in the CRC ripped off the charity of other citizens. This should not just be about dealing with individual cases but about changing the system. The programme for Government states, “We will pin down accountability for results at every level of public service - from Ministers down - with clear consequences for success and failure”. Uisce Éireann is a case in point. We tried for 18 months to get answers to questions on how this project was being put together but did not get any. It is not just about a series of commitments but about what sort of Ireland, state, island, republic we want to see. In the Government’s three years in office there has been clear evidence that the Ireland coming from this programme will be nothing like that envisioned in the 1916 Proclamation.

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