The problems for people with disability are recognised and the solutions are clear, writes Marianne O'Malley
A poignant sight early on Tuesday morning was the number of wheelchair adapted buses parked near the Mansion House in Dublin, where normally you'd see snazzy company cars.
With over 70 per cent of people with disability unemployed, they don't qualify for company cars, or salaries for that matter, and so are rarely seen during the course of a normal working day.
But Tuesday was no ordinary day in the city. The icy rain and biting wind did not deter people with disability, carers, facilitators and representative groups making the journey from all parts of Ireland to be present when the European Year of People with Disability was opened by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
Not all, however, were there to attend the reception. Some groups and individuals decided to boycott the opening and instead remained outdoors, holding a dignified picket to highlight the crisis within the different services.
With funding shrinking in real terms, an already hopelessly inadequate service is plummeting for many of our most vulnerable citizens. Their's was a political protest to canvass our Government to deal with this emergency.
Unlike most adversarial picket-lines, there was no contention or disagreement between the groups. Friendly words and smiles of support were exchanged. Everyone wants the same things. An acknowledgement of the current inadequate situation, and a commitment by our representative to remove the inequities and inequalities in our system. Where - and here's a black oxymoron if ever there was one - if you have got the "right disability" and live in the right area you may well receive an appropriate service. But in Ireland in 2003, there are still people pleading for basic services that will allow them live with hope and dignity, and they are being refused.
That is why some people chose to boycott the opening, and also why some people chose to attend.
In an RTÉ interview, a smiling and affable Taoiseach seemed to mistakenly believe that those who attended the opening were implicitly accepting his Government's policy towards people with disability. Quite the reverse is true. A large number of representative bodies and individuals attended because they are hugely supportive of this European initiative.
They are hopeful that an information and education programme focusing on the contributions, tangible and intangible, that will be there for us if we tap this unrecognised resource will effect the necessary change; that an awareness of ability will grow out of the current uncertainty and anxiety about disability in our Government and citizens.
Unlike so many other problems in our country that require a resolution but dissenting voices offer contradictory solutions that result in stalemate, the problems for people with disability are recognised and the solutions are clear.
The only dissension is in successive governments, which continue to apply placatory and high profile band-aids to individual crisis situations.
There's a lot of goodwill in Ireland for people with disability. Fuzzy, unfocused goodwill to be sure, but it's there. The problem is that without it becoming a concerted and dynamic determination to improve the lives of people with disability we will continue to fail, to neglect and to ignore the deprivation suffered by those members of our society.
Previous generations were ignorant of much of the private suffering that was inflicted on vulnerable people in our country. Let's not have future generations look back at us with disdain because of our treatment of people with disability.