We have entered what could be a new era for people with disabilities. A permanent Council for the Status of People with Disabilities came into existence at the start of the year though it will not start work fully until March. That Council is genuinely representative of people with disabilities and was elected by them in ballots throughout the State. As an official, representative, permanent body it has an unprecedented opportunity to advance the interests of its constituency. At the heart of that work must be the promotion of the message that most of the handicaps faced by people with disabilities are social, not medical.
If people with disabilities cannot use public transport it is not the fault of their disabilities, it is the fault of CIE. If people with disabilities cannot get into a hotel it is the fault of the hotel, not the fault of their disabilities. If people with disabilities cannot get job interviews it is the fault of those who select candidates, not the fault of their disabilities. To tackle these and the other social barriers put in front of people with disabilities the Council will have to work with energy, determination and, perhaps even passion. Its ability to lobby government will be crucial to its success. It is hard to see how the ignorance and prejudice confronting people with disabilities today can be tackled successfully without at least some legislation to back the effort.
At the same time the Council will need to win hearts and minds among employers, trade unions and policy makers. In a recent article in the disability magazine, Insight, the Fianna Fail MEP, Mr Brian Crowley, expressed the belief that the answer to prejudice against people with disabilities is to change the education system so that disabled children go to school with all other children. Such a move might be expensive at the beginning and awkward to implement. But the present system of special and specialised schools is expensive and awkward too awkward for the children who have to by pass their local schools to attend them.
Indeed, is there any justification for continuing to separate children with disabilities from their friends, from involvement in the social life of their peers and, in some cases, from their families? This issue alone, perhaps, gives an indication of the size of the task facing the new Council. Add discrimination in employment, inaccessible transport and buildings and the unhelpfulness of bureaucracy and one can see that the Council will need all the courage it can muster.
The unhelpfulness of bureaucracy deserves special mention. One of the consequences of having a disability is a career spent trying to get services out of those people in officialdom whose job it is to provide them. In this task, the person with a disability gets little or no help from the bureaucracy - indeed the evidence gathered for the recent report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities (the forerunner of the Council) showed that the opposite is often the case. It is hard to appreciate the degree of anger, frustration," rage and stress which many people with disabilities feel in the unequal battle with bureaucracy.