Sir, - I would like to compliment your correspondents Dick Walsh and Padraig O'Morain for highlighting the alternatives facing the Minister for Finance and the Government as they prepare for the forthcoming Budget.
Your correspondents are not only accurately reporting the mood of many people in desperate need of an adequate health/social care service, but are also challenging all of us as to the sort of society we wish to be part of.
We have seen politicians of all parties acknowledge the growing waiting lists of people with disabilities and their families for an appropriate service - a service that, I suspect, many of your readers assume is already in place. Yet when it comes to acknowledging the priority that is the unmet needs of people with a disability in the most meaningful way, through the release of adequate funds, they are strongly reticent. This is true of politicians of all parties.
Some individual Ministers have made attempts to improve some services to people with disabilities and this is surely to be welcomed. However, unless Government in its totality, as represented through the Minister for Finance on Budget day, makes the necessary investments in people with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups, then continued service delivery and development will never reach a level of which the Celtic Tiger would be proud.
Do your readers agree? - Yours, etc., Roger Acton, Chief Executive, Disability Federation of Ireland,
Blackthorn Avenue, Dublin 18.