For years, everyone has known that thousands of people all over the country are being grossly exploited, working longs hours for virtually no pay, writes Mary Raftery.
They toil in sheltered workshops, making wooden palates, packing various goods, and in one instance staffing the shop in the Oireachtas. Although, in general they are invisible people, being screwed in silence by a system which values neither them nor their work.
The fact that these workers are disabled is not relevant - they do a day's work and should receive at least the minimum wage. Instead, we have reports of workers being paid as little as €5 a week. The average appears to be in the region of some €25 a week.
For at least the past decade, the exploitation of these individuals has been repeatedly highlighted. What has transpired as a result can best be described as a hierarchy of betrayal.
Leading the pack as prime deceiver is of course the Government. Its capacity for duplicity has been staggering. A commitment to reform had been included in successive national wage agreements since the late 1990s.
Partnership 2000's commitment to a code of practice was ignored. Likewise, with the commitments made in the PPF (remember that one - Programme for Prosperity and Fairness)? and subsequently in Sustaining Progress.
A code of practice was eventually drawn up in 2004, which defined clearly the rights of those in sheltered workshops, including an entitlement to be paid. That this was so unpalatable to government can be perceived in the way the convention was promptly buried. It was never formally published, and no one (least of all the disabled workers concerned) was told about it. The creation of this secret, and thus meaningless, code of practice was government at its most Kafkaesque.
Second in the betrayal stakes are the so-called service providers. These are the organisations which run the sheltered workshops. Most call themselves charities and depend for their survival on Government funding.
Many have presided for decades over the exploitation of their workers, no doubt smugly convinced of their own virtue in helping others less fortunate than themselves.
Most clearly do not consider those who work for them as deserving of the same rights enjoyed by the rest of the community. They have a tendency (shared incidentally by Government agencies) to variously describe the work carried out at their workplaces as either therapeutic activity or training. Some even have the nerve to call it a form of respite care for those with learning disabilities. Best of all was the excuse given for not properly paying those who staffed the Oireachtas shop: they were in "work preparation", according to Frank Flannery of Rehab, who claimed consequently that minimum wage obligation did not apply.
More often than not, there is little or no therapeutic value to what can be repetitive and boring tasks. The training component is negligible, particularly as many of the individuals have been doing the same work for years and still continue to be called trainees. It is merely a cynical euphemism to mask the brutal reality that these workers are little better than slaves. Next up is the National Disability Authority (NDA), which deserves to be roundly condemned for its record of sloth on this issue.
It proudly boasts on its website that one of its statutory functions is to "to develop standards and codes of practice" and to monitor their implementation. Barely a mention though of the code to protect the rights of those in sheltered workshops.
Like everyone else, the NDA seems happy to effectively ignore that particular bit of its statutory remit.
Last but not least come the trade unions. Granted, there is the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' (Ictu) insistence on the inclusion of reform proposals in most of the various social partnership agreements during the past decade.
However, it is difficult to view this as anything other than lip service. As each commitment was so blithely ignored by Government, there were no howls of outrage from Ictu.
When it comes to activity at grassroots level, the trade unions have not exactly been falling over themselves to recruit members in sheltered workshops and actively defend them against such rampant exploitation. In fact, to their eternal shame, most have shied away, leaving an acutely vulnerable group of workers bereft of protection.
One notable exception which should be mentioned was the campaign to save Blindcraft, a sheltered workshop with a difference. Here, the blind workers had the benefit of the active involvement of Siptu, and went on strike during the 1990s in their battle for a decent wage.
They remain unique among workers with disabilities in that they won their struggle to be treated fairly, despite the enormous obstacles put in their path by a Government which clearly remains terrified lest some nasty precedent be created which might enable disabled workers to actually have rights.