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Open Letter to Fergus Finlay
national |
health / disability issues |
opinion/analysis
Thursday September 21, 2006 11:41 by Miriam Cotton
Response to item in Irish Examiner I have to take issue with Fergus Finlay’s article in last Tuesday's Irish Examiner (‘Aisling’s story shows how special people are doing it for themselves’). While I have no wish whatever to denigrate any progress made by special people in determining outcomes for themselves it is simply not true to say that ‘they’re well on the way to be being able to protest on their own behalf now.’ It may be true for some but certainly not all and definitely not the majority. The claim appears not to include at all those individuals who are more seriously dependent and a great number of those who, for lack of opportunity and appropriate supports, are prevented from consistently meaningful forms of self-determination, because of the badly under-funded and administered lottery that is state provision for people with disability. |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexaminer/pages/story....1.asp
You can read the rest of Fergus Finlay's article by clicking on the link above.
I've heard the name time & time again.
I've seen and heard this bearded person, unelected by the Irish people - yet at one time very well paid to represent and interpret their views. Whose views?
Now he has taken it upon himself to represent the views of a young Irish woman and present her views and achievements to us as representative of the whole.
He truly must be a very important person.
Who is he?
This article I wrote last year is hardly the definitive account of Finlay and his career but it may give a little context for his involvement in the issue of disability.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/72934
Finlay was not best pleased by this article and because of it has declined to work with me on disability issues again. His main bone of contention was my reference to his role in the Labour Party's philosophical shift towards pragmatism. Or what many of us would see in reality as a shift to the right - or at least to allowing the right almost exclusive determination of the political agenda. We have certainly seen an ever-increasing right-ward shift since Dick Spring and Labour were last in government.
Where disability is concerned he is very committed to that issue and has good reason to be. He has certainly done a great deal around the issue of rights but it appears that he and others within the disability lobby are preparing to dump the pursuit of rights in favour of a softly softly approach. My view is that they are capitulating both to prejudice and fear of the mood of greed that has gripped the electorate in many places. Having strenuously fought against the legislation as opposition parties, Labour, Sinn Fein, Fine Gael and it seems possibly even Joe Higgins have gone to ground on the issue of rights. (I base that claim on having offered to interview Joe Higgins for Indymedia three times and not having had a response.) There are also those within the lobby itself who will not say so in public - in fact who claim the direct opposite - but who are politically aligned with FG and who are effectivley sabotaging the consensus that once existed around the issue of rights. In the meantime one thing remains constant: the level of provision across the whole range of services needed by people with disabiliity is atrocious. There are individual success stories but they are not the norm.