I move:
That Dáil Éireann, conscious of the special needs of the physically disabled in Ireland and the present discrimination practised against them especially in relation to employment, social services, housing and other facilities for their welfare, calls on the Government to take immediate steps to improve the quality of life for disabled persons in Ireland.
The purpose of tabling this motion is to highlight the present discrimination practised against the physically disabled and to propose measures and policies which would establish the rights of the disabled in Irish society and to demand that the Government improve the quality of life for those people by taking immediate action on the proposals which will be made tonight on behalf of the Labour Party.
It will not be enough to highlight the problems, propose solutions and make promises. We must use the opportunity presented by this debate to commit the Dáil to the introduction of a Disabled Persons Bill, which will enshrine the rights of the physically handicapped in law, their rights of access to the environment, their right to employment, housing and other social services, their right to proper treatment in homes and institutions. We will be seeking those things. We feel they should be enshrined in law.
The physically disabled in this country have been fobbed off with promises of action from successive Governments. They now want a charter of rights enshrined in law so that they will no longer have to rely, as in the past, on the goodwill of central government and local authorities to implement changes as they see fit. I envisage a Disabled Persons Bill as the only logical outcome of this debate. It is the only initiative which will put an end to the procrastination which has masqueraded as policy for the disabled over the years.
In the debate this evening, on behalf of the Labour Party I hope to highlight the discrimination faced by disabled people in terms of accessibility to the environment, employment, housing, health welfare and education. It can be seen from this list that the rights of the disabled directly affect four Government Departments. I am sorry that the four Ministers representing those Departments are not present tonight to listen to this debate.
Before I review the discrimination practised against the disabled in those areas, I would like to make a few general points. Although I will be critical of the Government in a number of areas and will be demanding action on behalf of my party on a number of points, I accept that the failure to establish the rights of the physically handicapped in Ireland is shared by a number of successive Governments. We all share the guilt. We have all failed to muster the political will which would enable the financial resources and the policies to be brought forward. I remember tabling a Disabled Persons Bill in 1972, the purpose of which was to outline the points I am discussing here tonight. It remained on the Order Paper for more than four years without even being given the courtesy of a First Reading. The policy of procastination is a long-standing one.
Another general point I wish to make is that it has often been said that implementing a charter of rights for the disabled is in some sense impractical, given their supposedly small numbers when compared with the population as a whole. This section was reflected in the Seanad Debate on the disabled last November when the Minister of State, in Volume 90, column 155, said:
To put the whole issue into perspective one must consider first the scale of the problem—only about one in 2,000 of our population is confined to a wheelchair.
He also referred to the costs involved and other urgent demands on State resources.
The first point to be made here is that human rights is not a numbers game. It is a prescription for the oppression of any minority in our society to maintain that the rights of our disabled citizens will be respected only in proportion to the percentage of our total population they comprise. Every disabled person in Ireland has human rights as an individual not as a group. Every disabled person would not have to be a member of a majority group in our society to claim them.
Even leaving aside this argument, one must realise that tens of thousands of people other than those confined to wheelchairs are in some sense handicapped by an environment which is hostile to human needs. The elderly are impeded by high kerbs, steep stairways and inaccessible public transport. More than 345,000 people are over the age of 65 years. All of those people are handicapped by inaccessible environments. There are 6,000 blind, more than 2,000 have multiple sclerosis, 3,000 people have cerebral palsy, 3,500 people suffer from the after-effects of polio and 14,000 have epilepsy. I could go on and on with the figures. The people with heart and respiratory diseases are also handicapped by a hostile environment. We cannot talk in terms of numbers alone. It is no exaggeration to say that a quarter of our population are adversely affected by the present inaccessible state of our environment. When we talk about taking measures to help the handicapped we are talking about taking measures to help ourselves. We will all get old, become more and more dependent on the environment and we will want to ensure that it is sympathetic to our needs when they arise.
Another point I wish to make is in regard to the United Nations declaration on the rights of the handicapped person passed in 1975. This declaration sets out the rights of disabled people to dignity and basic human rights, proper social services, employment and accessible environment. Article 13 of this declaration states that disabled persons, their families and communities shall be fully informed by all appropriate means of the rights contained in this declaration. In reply to a question of mine, No. 388, on what steps the Government are taking to publicise this declaration the Minister for Foreign Affairs replied as follows:
The terms of this declaration have been brought to the attention of the main public bodies concerned with the provision of health services in Ireland. As the Deputy may be aware, 1981 has been designated the International Year of Disabled Persons and I understand that preliminary consideration is being given in the Department of Health to the measures which it will be appropriate to take on behalf of the disabled in that year. The sentiments and aims of the declaration will be borne in mind in determining these measures.
The terms of the declaration are made known to Government agencies but not to handicapped people. We can always hope that in 1981 the Government will take appropriate measures with regard to the declaration. This is a ludicrous answer and is an indication of the total lack of information provided to the disabled in regard to their rights.
A booklet entitled Aid for the Disabled was produced in 1973. It has yet to be updated. When my office contacted the Department of the Environment and asked for a copy, the answer was that nobody had ever heard of it. This is it, and it was produced by the Department of Local Government in 1973. They said that it must have something to do with the Department of Health. As it took them three days to locate a copy of the booklet, one can only imagine the difficulties faced by the handicapped in trying to get information on their entitlements. The most basic right of the disabled is the right to information. The State must institute a policy of actively informing the disabled of their rights. The disabled should not have to seek the information.
How can the Minister inform the disabled of the services for which they are eligible and how can he plan their social, medical and emotional needs when he does not know how many disabled persons there are in each local authority and health board area? At a time when we can accurately enumerate the number of sheep and cattle in the country as well as the number of what we call illegitimate births, it is outrageous that no one can say with certainty how many handicapped citizens we have. There should be a statutory obligation on local authorities and health boards to maintain a register of disabled persons so that their needs can be planned.
In this motion we refer to discrimination. What we mean is that the lack of initiative and concern has resulted in a situation whereby the handicapped are isolated from society, unable to participate in normal activities due to our hostile physical environment, an inflexible educational system, the refusal of public and private employers to adapt their working environments and an inadequate range of State support services. If our political leaders treated a religious or political minority in the same way in which the handicapped are treated there would be an international outcry and Ireland would be pilloried in the eyes of the world.
A policy of apartheid is practised against the disabled, a policy which isolates them from so-called normal citizens. This policy relegates them to the status of second-class citizens and is most apparent in the inaccessibility of our environment. Can one imagine what it must be like to be unable to enter the majority of cinemas, shops and public buildings and to be unable to find a public toilet that has been adapted for use by the disabled? Can one imagine what it must be like to be unable to use public transport, to be unable to travel through the streets in a wheelchair? Whatever the frustration, pain and anguish that is caused, the end result is that there are so many obstacles to handicapped persons in our environment that our cities have become no-go areas for them.
Even the Minister for the Environment has been unable to estimate the number of buildings owned by the Government and local authorities which are presently accessible to the disabled. He fails to see the value of naming a date by which all such buildings will be accessible to the disabled. He says he lacks the necessary power to implement such a policy. On 31 October I asked the Minister for the Environment the percentage of all buildings occupied by Government Departments, local authorities and other State bodies which are fully accessible to the physically handicapped and if he would declare a date by which all such buildings would be made so. His answer was that the information requested in the first part of the question was not available and that a declaration on the lines suggested in the second part of the question would serve no useful purpose in the absence of powers to give practical effect to it. Where is the political will to cope with the problem? If the Government are unwilling to act, how can we expect action from the private sector? All we can expect from the private sector is apathy and procrastination.
In regard to public buildings owned by private individuals, the Minister points to proposed building regulations which will make all future buildings accessible to the physically handicapped. These building regulations have been in the planning stages for years. In November 1976 it was announced that submissions would be received up to May of that year. It is now three years later and the regulations are still being prepared. Local authorities have failed miserably to enforce a policy of access for the disabled at the planning stage of new buildings which are open to the public. The Minister for the Environment keeps saying that he is encouraging local authorities to use their powers and their influence. Encouragement is no substitute for a statutory obligation. Until new building regulations are introduced and proven to be effective there should be an obligation spelled out in law which would force local authorities to make accessible all public buildings under their control and to do everything in their power to make accessible existing shops, cinemas, theatres and churches.
Public transport is no better. We have purchased an executive jet to facilitate the travel to Europe of Government Ministers and at the same time deny full free travel facilities on public transport to many handicapped persons. Many of those who enjoy the privilege cannot avail of it because our buses and trains are inaccessible to them. CIE have no plan to make public transport accessible to the handicapped. I wrote to them in relation to this matter but did not receive a reply. In the US and in most European countries arrangements have been made to make public transport accessible to the disabled. The scheme for disabled drivers is encountering bureaucratic delays on the qualification that the car must be necessary for work. This qualification creates a serious Catch 22 situation for the disabled. As one disabled group said: "No job, no car; no car, no job".
What must we do to make our environment accessible? The Government must name a date by which all existing public buildings owned by the State will be adapted for access by the disabled. With 90,000 unemployed, a massive public works programme could be undertaken to achieve this. It has taken 11 years to get a ramp built at Leinster House, which is an indication of the kind of procrastination which must be brought to a halt if the disabled are to have access to post offices, social welfare Departments, employment exchanges and so on. The Government should make grants available for the adaptation of existing buildings owned by private individuals. They should set a deadline after which no grants will be given and on which all State support will be cut off from the company that owns a public premises which is not accessible to the disabled.
CIE must produce a plan to make public transport accessible. In reply to a question of mine the Minister for Transport and Power said that he had no official function in the matter. That is not good enough. His Department should provide the lead by adapting public transport for use by the disabled. The job qualification under the scheme for disabled drivers should be immediately dropped and the red tape blocking its implementation must be removed.
With regard to employment of the disabled, a survey undertaken by the Irish Wheelchair Association some years ago proved very interesting. That survey, by Pauline Faughnan, showed that more than 90 per cent of the members of that association were unable to obtain a job in open employment and only 10 per cent were able to find employment in sheltered workshops. That position is particularly alarming with the younger members of that association with more than half classified as nearly or fully independent. However, two-thirds of them remained unemployed. This scandal of chronic unemployment among the handicapped is another depressing instance of how they are being denied their basic rights as citizens of this country.
Most depressing of all is the failure of the State to take a lead in employing the handicapped. The 3 per cent quota system introduced in May 1977 appears to be in a shambles. The Minister is unable to say how many have been hired under the scheme, the percentage of workers in the public service who are handicapped or whether deadlines set up for the programme will definitely be met. The Minister for Labour, in his reply given to me on 31 October in answer to Question No. 405 stated:
(b) It is not possible to give the percentage of handicapped people now employed in the public sector as separate statistics of such persons are not compiled.
The 3 per cent quota should mean at least 6,000 jobs, excluding the Defence Forces. Yet all the Minister can report is that surveys have taken place of the people who might be employed. The National Rehabilitation Board, who were commissioned by the interdepartmental committee to produce this report, presented it on 30 October. When will this be made public? The Minister should come forward with this information. The report was presented to him on 30 October and, as far as I know, the scheme is not working. We have a right to know why.