Sir, – I was a member of the board of Special Olympics for a number of years, and chair for four years. During all that time there was at least one person with an intellectual disability on the board, representing the voice of the athletes. They were cogent, articulate, and focused. And from time to time they reminded us pretty directly of the job we were there to do. It may have seemed like a tokenistic gesture when it was first suggested, by Mary Davis, as it happens (Home News, October 20th), but after a while I couldn’t imagine being on a board that wasn’t prepared to listen to the voice of the people it was supposed to represent.
I suspect a lot of us service providers could learn lessons from the experience.
So I’ve been taken aback by some of the negative reaction to Mary Davis’s suggestion that a person with an intellectual disability could serve on the Council of State. It’s certainly insulting to a lot of my friends, but it’s also nonsensical. Seven places on the Council of State are reserved for “lay members”, and they are there to represent the views of us ordinary citizens.
Are people with an intellectual disability somehow less than ordinary citizens? Isn’t it time we just dropped some of the sillier taboos, and started treating everyone at least as if they had a right to be heard?
I look forward to the day when people with an intellectual disability sit alongside members of the travelling community, gay people, and a representative or two of the new Irish, at a table formerly reserved for no doubt worthy but generally elderly men who used to hold high office. It might require some stuff that comes before the Council of State to be demystified and communicated in plainer language. And that would be a bad thing – why? – Yours, etc,