John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I begin by mentioning the Oireachtas work and learn, OWL, programme. Ten people here are supported by two disability organisations along with the Houses of the Oireachtas Service and the City of Dublin Education and Training Board. They are here on work placement for nine months. When the Ceann Comhairle launched the programme a number of weeks ago, he mentioned this is the first Parliament in the world to do this. I want to mention that in particular because there has been some adverse media commentary on the programme. I am pleased to see the response from the Oireachtas about it. The last census showed that 22% of people with disabilities of working age are in employment and 53% of the rest of the population of working age are in employment. We have a long way to go. Programmes like this and having something such as this in the Oireachtas has to be a strong signal to the country in general, businesses and so on, to do their bit. Many other things have to happen. I ask that Members in this Chamber and the Leader, in whatever way is appropriate and possible, make sure that this programme goes from strength to strength. I note a motion that was tabled in South Dublin County Council on Monday evening which was passed unanimously and which addressed, among other things, having a similar programme within the council. It is important that we give support to these programmes to train people in the workplace.

Senator Feighan talked about commemorations of the First World War. I will quote the gravestone of an Englishman who was in the British army and whose surname was Kemp. It was in Normandy. He had just been married and had a young wife. She inscribed on his headstone: "O for the touch of a vanished hand." I have been all over Normandy, the Somme, Passchendaele, Verdun, Gallipoli and so on for the last 30 years. I have not seen a more arresting gravestone. I saw an unmarked gravestone near the Somme which just read: "An Irish soldier of the Great War". In commemorating them, we need, 100 years later, to have a greater sense of the meaning of our commemoration and what we learn from it about these horrendous events that started again in the late 1930s and in other places since then. What learning have we from it? It is one thing to say it was a senseless loss of life. I am not sure that the world has taken the lessons to heart. Senator Gavan mentioned Hungary. My colleagues with disabilities in Hungary consider themselves and their organisations to be hounded. We will see fewer of them on the streets. I am not making a party political point but saying there are things in states in the European Union that are going terribly in the wrong direction. We know what happens to disabled people in wars.