Political will could find a way to equality for disabled

THE incidence of disability varies around the world, ranging from 10 per cent in some countries to as much as 25 per cent in others. If one understands disability to include people with physical learning, mental health and sensory disabilities, the figure for Ireland is estimated to be between 15-20 per cent. A significant proportion of our population, then, deserving of fair representation.

The World Congress of Rehabilitation International is the oldest forum for this, having been established in 1922. The congress meets once every four years and the theme of this year's conference, held in New Zealand, was "Equality Through Participation: 2000 And Beyond". The key issues addressed were access, vision and human rights; in other words, the need to remove barriers and ensure resources; to develop strategies to bring change and move communities; and the removal of discrimination against people with disabilities. A timely reminder, perhaps, that people with disabilities cannot be regarded in isolation and planned for as a community apart, but rather as an integral part of the global community of able bodied people.

Which, I suppose, is the verb tenet which underlies the work of our own Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities. Established three years ago this December, the commission was charged with presenting the Government with measures that would give people with disabilities the same opportunities to participate as all other people in Irish life. The final report has been presented to the Minister for Equality and Law Reform. We can only hope its recommendations - which represent the hopes, ambitions and potential of this significant section of our population - will be put in place immediately.

This work must, I am sure, be of some solace to those who, because of their disability, have come up against the barriers of attitude, communication and design on a daily basis; those who have personally suffered exclusion and marginalisation; and those who have had to witness their isolation. There is little doubt but that disability takes its toll not only on those who are disabled, but also on their families, friends and carers. The Constitution of Ireland may well state that "all citizens shall, as human persons, be held as equal", but the reality for many people is far removed from such lofty concepts, far from ideal.

Eighty per cent of people with disabilities in Ireland are currently unemployed; many of those who are employed are badly paid and are rewarded with additional disincentives for their efforts. They have to work within a system that is user unfriendly. I know of one young man, for example, who, on taking up employment, relinquished his entitlement to any and all of his disability benefits. Quite rightly too, you might say. But when the company wound up its operations in Ireland, he not only lost his job but had to wait three months to have his travel allowance reinstated, and nine weeks for a return to welfare benefit. And his is not the only example that comes to mind. Another is of a young disabled person who bought a car. Because he had not sufficient means to purchase it independently, he applied for a grant and was awarded £2,000. Now if that grant had been in the form of a bank loan, he would have been able to repay it out of his mobility allowance in little over a year. But the grant was awarded by the State, and his mobility allowance issues from the State. The State, therefore, decreed that his mobility allowance should be withheld indefinitely. How, then, was he to pay for adaptation, insurance and servicing of his vehicle?

It is for reasons such as these that a large proportion of people with disability find themselves living in a poverty trap, dependent on discretionary payments which can, by the very nature of the discretion exercised over them, encourage further unnecessary discrimination. It is for reasons such as these that many disabled people rely on an unsympathetic public transport system as their only form of mobility.

We live in a society that is geared towards the able bodied, and in the hustle and bustle of everyday living, we sometimes forget that people with physical disabilities, people with mobility difficulties, or people who are blind or deaf are not able to gain access to some of our public phones, public toilets, churches, taxicabs, streets and our buildings as easily or independently as their able bodied fellow citizens.

What able bodied person, for example, could truly understand the horror of being in a mainline rail station unable to get from the platform onto a train, the doors of which are many case too narrow to facilitate wheelchair access and so you and your wheelchair end up being accommodated in a dank, dark and cold trailer attached to the rear of the train?

Or of being unable to gain access to a Community Care Office because the ramp and rails you need to get in are not in place because the building's front facade is "preserved"?

Or of waiting three months for a wheelchair to be repaired and being completely immobilised in the meantime?

Or of being unable to road a lesson in church because you can't reach the rostrum? Or of being lifted on and off a school bus "like luggage"?

What parent of an able bodied child can know the frustration and hurt of a parent who needs urgent residential care for a multiple handicapped teenager or adult but who has been informed that there is a 105 year waiting list, as has happened in some parts of this country?

It is generally accepted that there is a growing public awareness of the special requirements of people with disabilities. Undoubtedly, the publication of the commission's report will bring the issues of disability to a still bigger arena.

The commission, we are told, received more than 3,000 pages of submissions. Its report, therefore, can speak with the authority of experience and is one which deserves listening to and acting on. Therefore, it is important that, while negotiations to draw up a successor to the Programme for Competitiveness and Work are taking place, the cost of disability is recognised, represented and reflected in any new national agreement reached.

In the interim, I read that disabled voters who have had difficulty gaining access to their polling stations in the past may now apply to have their vote transferred to more accessible locations, in time for next week's referendum. Obviously, where there's a political will there's a way. Those responsible for the accessibility or otherwise of private offices and public places, take note.