What sense it sometimes makes to turn away from a world that doesn't want you. Yesterday, Jamie Sinnott's autism was an advantage, for once. It protected him, temporarily, from the emotional torture meted out to anyone who is different in this State.
It could not protect Kathryn, his mother, who saw her son's right to an appropriate education flushed down the sewage pipes of the Four Courts, along with the principle of £40,000 damages awarded for her 23 years of sacrifice.
Vanquished in the name of "Ireland", the Sinnotts are now legal history. "Ireland" won a major victory, but at what cost? We, the people, won't hang flags out at the news that the lives of Jamie Sinnott, and potentially thousands of others with disabilities, cannot be accommodated in all their diversity by the Constitution. We, the people, cannot be reassured by the knowledge that people with disabilities, and their carers, must rely on the Government's charity and largesse to get a fair chance at life.
Autism affects emotional and intellectual functioning. It is among the most challenging disabilities a parent can face. For some children, it manifests as a turning away from displays of love, leaving parents without the hugs and kisses that reward them for going the extra mile. Kathryn Sinnott went on for thousands of extra miles, regardless. Yet her courage was rewarded with a legal kick in the teeth and a blind indifference to the extra suffering caused.
The Government is at pains to assure people it appealed the Sinnott case because it was worried about the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary.
The Taoiseach, Tanaiste and Minister for Education have stressed repeatedly that the appeal against Sinnott was simply a technical exercise designed to clarify Mr Justice Barr's ruling in the High Court. It was not.
The Government's objection to the Barr ruling amounts to a refusal to countenance granting social or economic rights, other than as envisaged in 1937, for wholly ideological reasons.
THE Supreme Court's unanimous decision to overturn Mr Justice Barr's High Court ruling on the Sinnott case exposes the 1937 Constitution's serious limitations on basic questions of social and economic rights. A citizen with disability has no necessary right to appropriate education, good healthcare or other needs now considered basic.
Michael McDowell, the Attorney General, argued powerfully at the Burren Law School in May that there was no need to make separate provision for specific social and economic rights, because he believed they were already implied in the Constitution.
He went on to suggest that those who made the case for social and economic rights were motivated by ideological agendas, coming from the ground formerly occupied by the old left. Totalitarianism, the Soviet Union and other old empires were brought in to illustrate the point.
Are we to believe that Jamie and Kathryn Sinnott are Stalinist supporters masquerading as people in need? Or that disability is in itself an ideology? The Government's decision to appeal sent a clear message to individuals that if they want to assert their human rights, they must be prepared to risk mental health, peace of mind and money, because they will be opposed with every ounce of legal muscle the State can muster.
It taught citizens that individual social and economic rights are granted at the Government's pleasure, not because they are innate. And in Ireland, individual rights come second to political and bureaucratic convenience.
The Government is at pains to reassure us that all necessary services will be provided to autistic people, because it is becoming committed to that principle. But the principle itself is discretionary.
If Jamie Sinnott is unable to broadly mimic normal childhood development and be done with primary education before his majority, his special needs cannot be recognised in Constitutional form.
If Jamie Sinnott couldn't access an appropriate primary education by the age of 18, he must rely on political favours to grant him one in the future, as must everyone else. Like other autistic people, young and old, he is now obliged to remain at the mercy of a system which currently has a waiting list of almost 600 for developmentally appropriate care and education. Some of these people are currently in psychiatric institutions.
The Supreme Court's ruling confirms such rights are neither implied nor assumed and will only be addressed by making separate legal or Constitutional provision. People are already speaking of a disability Bill, a special ombudsman and/or a charter of rights to address the fallout from the Sinnott case. But what of the other hard cases - the haemophiliacs infected by AIDS; the children whose rights Judge Peter Kelly is trying to assert?
Today Jamie Sinnott is a loser because the Government sees his disability as a political statement. And we, the people, are supposed to be victorious in return.
mruane@irish-times.ie