EU: Up to 1,000 people, including 50 from the Centre for Independent Living in Dublin, will lobby MEPs in Strasbourg this week on rights for the disabled.
The group, which includes representatives from each European Union country, will split into smaller groupings this morning to meet their MEPs before staging a protest rally in the centre of Strasbourg tomorrow when the EU commissioners arrive.
The group is being assisted by the European Parliament's Disability Inter-Group, whose vice-president is Fianna Fáil MEP Brian Crowley. He and other Irish MEPs will meet the Irish contingent this morning.
Speaking to The Irish Times last night, Mr Crowley said a standard of independent living was first promised in Ireland in 1986, with personal assistants for disabled people.
However, while this measure was partially successful, many of the personal assistants were on Fás schemes and the system operated on a case-by-case basis, not as a standard entitlement.
The group was welcomed to the European parliament by Proinsias de Rossa, a member of the cross-party Disability Inter-Group. He said he hoped the group's voice would send a powerful message to the council of ministers and commissioners.
The parliament also stood in silence at the start of yesterday's meeting as a mark of respect to the "victims of the many tragic events that have taken place around the world this summer".
The president of the parliament Josep Borrell spoke of the floods in central Europe, the tsunami in Asia, forest fires in Portugal and Spain and Hurricane Katrina in the US.