Although there is much to welcome in the Disability Bill published yesterday, campaigners will be legitimately concerned about the many qualifications it contains tying the provision of services to issues of practicality and finance.
The Bill was published in the context of a campaign going back at least a decade for the provision of proper services to people with disabilities. Such was its resonance with the wider public that it resulted, during the tenure of the last government, in the withdrawal of an earlier version of the legislation and the inclusion in the Programme for Government of a commitment to the introduction of new "rights-based" disability legislation. Disability campaigner, Ms Kathy Sinnott, has since been elected to the European Parliament having narrowly failed to win a Dáil seat in the Minister for Health's own constituency. The clear message to the Government was that this issue was a priority.
Its response - the setting out of sectoral plans for all departments dealing with people with disabilities, the initiation of multi-year funding on both capital projects and services, as well as the publication of the Disability Bill - amounts to a real advance in responding to the multi-faceted and complex needs of people with disabilities.
The Bill itself contains many welcome provisions, including the drawing up of individual assessments of needs and a complaints and appeals procedure. The commitment to increased employment of people with disabilities in the public service, and to ensure the accessibility of buildings and services, also represents an advance. Provisions included in the legislation should facilitate, over a period, changes in our social environment that will allow people with disabilities to participate fully in society.
However, the legislation does not guarantee automatic access to rights-based services. The fact that assessments of needs will not result in any commitment to actually meeting those needs is a cause for real concern. The assessment will only be one factor among others - primarily practicality and the availability of resources - to be taken into account.
The Government has a responsibility to allocate its resources on a global scale, in accordance with its commitments and society's needs. It must be accountable to the electorate, through the Oireachtas, not to lobby groups. Nor should it allow its financial priorities to be set by the courts. It is true also that it will take time for the expert staff, envisaged in this Bill, to be recruited.
The reality remains that the caveats built into the legislation allow for the rights of those with disabilities to be sidelined when the political heat dies down. The Government may be able to allay such fears in its spending Estimates in a good year. But it is regrettable that the ongoing commitment necessary to meet the rights of some of our most vulnerable citizens will continue to depend on the state of the public finances. A personal right qualified by money is no right at all.