Madam, - Fianna Fáil backbenchers are rightly animated about the rightward drift (from the right of centre) of their party. Hanging around with the Progressive Democrats is seen as "a bad influence" on an otherwise softly egalitarian party.
Whatever about the accuracy of such analysis it is clear that the people have indicated a preference for left-leaning politics in local and European elections. There is a valid suspicion that this may also indicate some popular disapproval of abstract ideological posturing by the more prominent members of the current administration.
The issue on which such posturing has had a most negative impact is the proposed Disabilities Bill. Just a year after hosting the Special Olympics - when we seem to have divested ourselves of the cloak of good intentions - Fianna Fáil backbenchers would do well to remember that while they may remain the minor ideological partners in government they are the partners with the most seats.
Michael McDowell will lecture them until they are blue in the face about why a rights-based approach to disability is untenable. This is hardly surprising from a man who proclaims the necessity of a functional underclass in an unequal society where the state (in all of its emanations) acts, at best, as a supposedly neutral referee or, more likely, as a disinterested bystander.
This view of the world is a million ideological miles from the republican ideal to which most Irish parties (including the PDs) are nominally committed. It belittles equality and solidarity without which liberty is meaningless.
If Fianna Fáil backbenchers want to show a real capacity to respond to the will of the people they should start by demanding a real human rights-based approach in disability legislation now. There has been enough patronising discombobulation on this issue and the apparent disquiet of Fianna Fáil backbenchers will begin to resemble a temporary electoral grief reaction unless they follow through by acting on their renewed social conscience. -Yours, etc.,
DONNCHA O'CONNELL,
Moycullen,
Co Galway.