I move:
That Seanad Éireann calls on the Government to launch a campaign in the interests of physically handicapped persons so that easy means of entry may be provided for them to shops, offices, churches, school buildings, hotels, restaurants, places of entertainment and public transport; and requests that the Government itself give the lead in this campaign by ensuring ease of entry for such persons to all State premises to which the public are entitled to have recourse.
The Chairman of the Irish Wheelchair Association, Mr. Liam Maguire, in making his address to the Union of Voluntary Organisations conference in Wexford on 14 to 16 October, 1977, covered a very wide range of problems affecting the physically handicapped. He dealt with them in regard to the implications for them and suggested remedies that might be needed. He said that until the legislators of the country can claim that they have done their duty towards the physically handicapped then his address was an accusation rather than a request.
He entitled his address "A fair deal for the handicapped". My colleagues and myself in the Labour Party are putting down this motion to try to get people to start moving along the lines advocated by the Chairman of the Irish Wheelchair Association in his address. That is to move towards giving the physically handicapped a fair deal in society.
When putting down the motion we were conscious of the fact that it is a long and winding road, but we believe that the way forward must begin somewhere. We also believe that the best means of making progress in this matter of a fair deal for the physically handicapped is to request the Government to give the lead on one aspect of the total question of the problems facing the physically handicapped.
We ask the Government to set an example by ensuring ease of entry for the physically disabled to all State premises to which the public are entitled to have recourse. It is interesting to note that since the motion was circulated a ramp has been fixed outside the main hall entrance to Leinster House. This may, or may not be, coincidental. I do not know but it is worth saying that if somebody in the public service sees the need for a ramp to provide easy access for the physically handicapped to the main hall of Leinster House then one is entitled to assume that the need is already recognised by responsible people in the public services. There is a need to provide this kind of easy access to all State-owned and public buildings on the part of the public service.
I should like to point out at this stage that I am reliably informed that the promise to put down this ramp was given approximately ten or 11 years ago. Neither the Fianna Fáil Government when in office nor the Coalition Government when they were in office gave effect to this. However, the ramp is there now and it will set an example to the other people concerned with the question of providing such facilities in State-owned and public buildings.
From that admission of the need we, in the Labour Party, would envisage that certain things will happen in this type of campaign. For example, we see no reason why a date should not be set by which all existing buildings and services occupied by Government Departments and local authorities should be made fully accessible to the physically handicapped. The national building code, when it finally arrives in its full state, should embody adequate provisions for accessibility for the physically handicapped. There would be nothing wrong with having punitive measures written into such provisions, for example, withholding grants where such were being provided. Those are a couple of examples of how the Government could start the campaign requested.
Arising out of that the question may be posed that if we remove the frustration of the wheelchair users who become frustrated by steps, narrow doors, tiny lifts, revolving doors, high kerbs and so on, are we doing this for the benefit of the one person in every thousand of the population who are the wheelchair users?
I have to refer to the speech by the Chairman of the Irish Wheelchair Association, and he gives the answer. He tells us that people pushing prams, pregnant women, people with heart or respiratory ailments, the elderly, people with sight defects, amputees, people propelling trolleys, furniture removers and people on crutches are all suffering from the frustrations public buildings represent to them from the point of view of easy access.
If you put the same frustrations experienced by the users of wheelchairs together with the frustrations experienced by the other categories I have mentioned, you are talking about a very substantial proportion of the population.
The figure I have to hand is that one in five members of our society can expect to be disabled at some stage in their lives and will be denied easy access to public buildings. We will all get old and doddery and I hope we will not be confined to the house. However, if this continues and the campaign is not put into action, then the one out of every five I have referred to, supported by their public representatives, will rightly level the accusation that if the Government fail or refuse to give a lead in this campaign, the rest of the nation is failing to work towards a fair deal for the handicapped, an obligation, which we feel, lies squarely on the shoulders of every Government.
On many aspects of the problems affecting wheelchair users it might not be a straightforward matter to introduce legislation. I submit this motion presents no such problem. The motion is clear cut in its intent. The emphasis is laid on the latter part of the motion in connection with the campaign requested. Let the Government take the lead, as the motion suggests. It will not be too difficult to deal with the offices, shops, churches, school buildings, hotels, restaurants and public transport once the example has been given. There will be difficulties but the example must be set and the campaign must be started. We will not solve the problems at once but at least we will make them less acute on the whole.
It astonishes me that architects, designers and planners go to no end of trouble in drawing up plans for elaborate buildings to make sure that those buildings are visually powerful, that they are attractive to visitors and have a selling point. They deal with all the factors which attract attention such as fire hazards, density, volume, height, and so on. Technologically, you could say they always look efficient. For some reason or other they ignore the need to make provision for easy access for wheelchair users, or if you want to put it another way, one out of every five members of society who will be physically handicapped. I fail to see, as do my colleagues in the Labour Party, that two-legged able-bodied people would be at a disadvantage if the architects, planners and designers tried to cater for all the people.
Does this mean that the architects are not conscious of the structure of the population? Does it mean they look upon handicapped people as a sub-group who comprise a distinct population and have not the same rights as the rest of us in this respect? Do the architects and designers limit this question of planning for accessibility to the building of old people's homes? If the answer to these questions is yes, then the architects are guilty of discrimination. But are they alone guilty? Are we to take it that the archiects are not conscious of the fact that accidents can make people physically handicapped temporarily and cripple people, and that disease can handicap people temporarily or cripple them? All those people, together with the other handicapped groups I referred to, are locked out of offices to which every other citizen has easy access? In other words, they are locked out of public buildings to which they are entitled to have easy access to conduct their business like any other member of the population and with the same dignity.
Even though I have spoken about architects and planners, the problem in regard to the question of planning and designing probably can be found at the educational level, the diploma and degree awarding bodies, and the general curricula and examination levels, because these may not have regard to accessibility for the physically handicapped. I do not know because I never had third level education. In fact, I have never been to the second-level, so I do not know. I suspect that as in many other cases the problem begins at the educational level. While this question of the curricula may not be relevant to the specific request at the end of the motion, it is quite reasonable to refer to it, because we are asking the Government to give a lead in this campaign and to start the campaign by providing ramps and easy access to all State and public buildings. That is emphasised in the motion. The point I made about the degree awarding bodies who give degrees to architects is relevant to the overall terms of the motion. Therefore, I would ask the Minister to refer it to the appropriate Minister as soon as it is practicable for him to do so.
As a priority, I ask the Minister when replying to this motion to make a statement of intent that all existing buildings occupied by Government Departments, local authorities and other State bodies will be made fully accessible to the physically handicapped as an example to the rest of the nation. If the Minister is not in a position to go that far, then I hope the tone of his contribution will give some indication of how far it is practicable or possible to co-operate in this campaign.
I have laid greater emphasis on wheelchair users than on other physically handicapped people. My own research is the cause of that. I spent some time perusing a book called "Design for the Disabled" by Selwyn Goldsmith and I discovered one very important thing. As he puts it, the wheelchair user is handicapped three times over. First, he has a disability that puts him in a wheelchair. Secondly, he is obliged to function at a lower level than standing people, and always at the same level, which is constraining both physically and psychologically. Thirdly, he has to roll around in a cumbersome, awkward way in a space consuming, distinctive, inelegant vehicle.
When you look at the problem from this point of view, it demonstrates in a very positive way the need to have it brought home forcibly that those citizens are being discriminated against in the sense that all buildings have been geared to suit two-legged able-bodied people. This is a great indictment on any Government, whether they are a Coalition Government or a Fianna Fáil Government. It is discriminatory. Unless some start is made by way of the suggested campaign requested in the motion, there will be no change in this attitude in the future. If the Government give this request their blessing in a practical sense, many other things will follow and perhaps even the question of the curricula may take on some meaning.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted in Resolution 3447, a declaration on the rights of disabled persons in December 1975. Article 8 reads:
Disabled persons are entitled to have their special needs taken into consideration at all stages of economic and social planning.
If this lead were given by the Government, we could then reasonably expect them to move on to giving fuller effect to the terms of Article 8, Resolution 3447. There is a little more in it than the sentence I quoted for the benefit of the motion. We hear many complaints from people in new housing schemes about proposed developments being incomplete. Although the local authorities are statutorily obliged to provide a range of services to the community within their functional areas they cannot deal with unco-ordinated and contradictory proposals from private developers which fail to provide for wheelchair users. If this is the case, there is little hope of getting to grips with the idea of planning to create the socially just environment about which we so often speak. That means suffering for the handicapped.
I believe—and my colleagues agree with me—that if the Government agree with us and launch this campaign, the necessary legislation will follow. We would then no longer be paying lip service to the idea of a socially just environment but we would be putting it into practice. We have not spent much money on the problems of the physically handicapped in the area of making public buildings accessible to them. In 1975, the Dutch spent 25 million guilders—£5 million—to create an environment suitable to the needs of the physically handicapped without affecting the rights of two-legged able-bodied people. When you provide accessibility to public buildings for handicapped people you do not in any way inhibit or legislate against two-legged people. They are capable of using the same facilities.
Referring back to Selwyn Goldsmith's book "Design for the Disabled" to give emphasis to the point I made earlier, he also said that buildings always have been and always will be geared to suit two-legged able-bodied people and not people propped up on sticks or rolling about in wheelchairs. This is the reality. If we get a debate like this going, whether we get full agreement or full acquiescence is irrelevant. It would be equally important to get acquiescence in the areas where we cannot get agreement, and agreement where we can get agreement. In that sense there would be a beginning to the end of discrimination against wheelchair users. We can do this by tackling the curricula and by seeing that the diploma and degree awarding bodies make provision in their examinations for accessibility for the physically handicapped.
One in every five people will be handicapped at some stage of their lives. The campaign we request to be launched in our motion can be much more readily dealt with than the other questions posed, the question of the curricula, the examinations, and so on. Our request could well be given speedy attention in the areas where it is practicable rather than promising a crumb off the whole cake like the ramp provided outside Leinster House after 11 years. I would prefer the Minister to reject the motion on the basis that everything I said is impracticable rather offering a crumb. I do not think the Minister will say that, because the motion is not all impracticable, although it may be in certain areas.
To offer anything less than the full terms of the motion would not be satisfactory but at the same time if we could adopt most of the motion there would be some cause for satisfaction. It would be an insult to our fellow members of society if we said: "Now you have a ramp outside Leinster House, we will put another ramp outside another public office building and do nothing again for 11 years." We are not talking about the problems of mentally handicapped people. We are talking about giving the handicapped the same facilities to conduct their business as ordinary citizens have. My colleagues and I would have liked to put down a motion very much wider in its implication. For example, we could well have put down a motion to the effect that the entire physical environment should be designed to cater for all people indiscriminately. I do not have to tell anybody in this House how far-reaching that type of motion could be. Because I had to leave school at 12 years of age I can only do my sums one step at a time, so this is the way I decided to approach this matter, and my colleagues agreed with me. However, we chose this one aspect of the whole problem which is the easiest to give effect to, and we did so to avoid getting into an area which might militate against any speedy solution the Minister might be willing to consider.
We believe the motion will not bring the Minister into conflict with local authorities and other public bodies. It would be a brave public servant who would say that the one in every five in the population is to be discriminated against indefinitely. We do not see the cost factor as being very substantial relatively speaking and, in any case, the money must be found to do the job because the right of easy accessibility is a global right for all men. One member of the Government has launched a public campaign very successfully. This motion asks for the launching of a campaign to ensure that members of society who are physically handicapped get their rights in accordance with the Constitution. Let us avoid the major issue for the moment and let us see what we can do with this motion.