The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has rejected calls from the disability rights lobby for the scrapping of the long-awaited Disability Bill, due to be presented to the Dáil later this month.
A spokesman for Ms Mary Wallace, Minister of State at the Department, said she was willing to consider amendments to the Bill but would not countenance withdrawing it. This is despite almost universal opposition to the Bill from organisations representing people with disabilities.
Adding its voice to that lobby yesterday, People with Disabilities in Ireland Ltd (PwDI) said the Bill in its present form was "unamendable" and should be redrafted as it failed to confer rights on people with disabilities, their families and carers.
The organisation's chief executive, Mr Michael Ringrose, said the timeframe for many of the proposals were too long. Train services, for instance, would not be totally accessible until 2115.
The group also expressed concern that Sections 47 and 48 of the Bill prohibited people from seeking recourse to the courts.
The Department spokesman rejected this claim, however, and said the Bill instead offered new forms of appeal to the Ombudsman. It also gave "substantial new powers" to the National Disability Authority, he said.
Defending the Department's decision to legislate on the "duties" of State agencies, rather than on the "rights" of disabled people, he said the Bill might be of "questionable constitutionality" if one group of individuals was given superior rights to the rest of the population.
But the Forum for People with Disabilities said if constitutional problems did exist the Government should deal with them by way of a referendum rather than "sticking their head in the sand and abdicating their responsibility".
Forum co-ordinator, Mr Dónal Toolan, said the Government had committed itself to producing rights-based legislation in as early as 1996. Under the Bill, "there is no mechanism for people to seek redress if actions are not taken," he said.
