Category Archives: current affairs

Tuesday Thoughts – Budget 2025: A Reflection

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October is a reflective time for me. It’s bookended by my father-in-law’s anniversary on the first day of the month, and my granny Maye’s anniversary on Halloween night. Sandwiched in between is Martin Naughton’s anniversary. Regular readers of this blog should be familiar with Martin by now; he is considered the Father of the Independent Living Movement in Ireland. Next Monday, 13 October will mark his ninth year “away from home”, and he is still sorely missed, both in the capacity of being the forefront figure of the movement, and as a comrade and friend.

Martin came to mind this morning as I read the paper this morning on Budget Day. I have vague memories from my youthful twenties of Budget Day being an event that people got excited about. Now, it’s a day filled with dread, the ghosts of the 2008 recession continuing to haunt us. In 2012, then Health Minister James Reilly announced a sweeping cut in funds of €10m to the Personal Assistant Service. It was salvaged by the actions of a group called the Leaders Alliance, headed by Eugene Callan and included many disabled activists, too many of whom have also since passed away, who slept outside the Dail for three nights in protest. Leigh Gath told the media: “We’re often seen as the most vulnerable targets, but after today and however much longer we have to stay here, maybe that will change.”

Irish disability history was made that on 5 September 2012, when the government announced that they were rowing back on the inhumane and savage cuts, but the threat still lingers over disability services, Personal Assistance in particular. 

Back in 2025, I read in the Irish Independent this morning that “disability services will be a central part of the budget.” It goes on to state that “this will be used for more staff, more residential places, more adult day places and make some contribution towards assessment of needs.” This is great news for many families who are under strain, but I’m sceptical as to whether there’s any great demand for adult day places or residential places among disabled people themselves.

I accept that there are some disabled people who enjoy the camaraderie of attending day services, who love meeting their peers and who love going on day trips to places away from their families. I appreciate that for many accessing respite services that it allows them a level of freedom that they may not enjoy at home. However, it is crucial that disabled people themselves are holding the reigns of control over their own lives, that they themselves are demanding and designing the services that will enable them to get the most from their lives.

In my experience, and from talking to other people, the Personal Assistant Service is the one service that offers personal freedom and choice. It allows people to study, work, and to participate in society as contributors and consumers.  In its purest form, it lends people more choice and control over their own lives – to do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want. Honestly, it’s been over ten years since I felt this way about my Personal Assistant Service, and I know I’m not alone in this.

Since the cutbacks were supposedly reversed in 2012 – nearly thirteen years ago – advocates for independent living and disability (human) rights have had the frustrating job of having to educate the government, service providers and disabled persons themselves about the philosophy of independent living and the importance of adopting a human rights approach. That means enjoying a standard of life that our non-disabled peers might take for granted: living in our own homes, perhaps with a partner or a family; engaging in meaningful employment or educational opportunities; availing of social outlets or even going travelling. It seems that every time disabled people win the right to do these things, another cutback or legislative loophole pulls the rug from under our feet.

Luckily, however, we are, in theory, in a better position to push for an acceptable standard of living than we were in September 2012. The UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) was ratified in 2018, and the monitoring/advisory body was established by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) by the end of that year. Around the same time, Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI) launched its #PASNow campaign, urging county councils to vote in favour of legislating the Personal Assistant Service, thus enshrining the right to Independent Living in Irish Law. Most recently, the publication of the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People 2025-2030 marks a vital shift in the State’s obligation to treat the barriers to inclusion that disabled people face as serious violations of their human rights.

Legislating for Personal Assistance Services in Ireland is a matter of urgency. Currently, PA hours are distributed, primarily by the HSE, in accordance with perceived need. It is not enough for anyone to be assisted out of bed, often at a time that does not suit the individual, and to be put back into bed at the end of a day. Humans need to feel a sense of purpose, a desire to fulfil their potential, and disabled people are no different. When a disabled person is denied access to the services they want as well as need (because, to paraphrase the great Martin Naughton, we should be able to do what we want as well as what we need),that person is at risk of isolation, of developing mental health problems, of never truly being recognised as an equal in Irish society.

Des Kenny said in Conversations about Activism and Change that while changes for the better are happening, overall, our progression towards equality is painfully slow. I know we have to look at the bigger picture, but I cannot help but feel frustrated that many who have fought battles in the name of achieving equity for disabled people have since passed, far too soon. The National Human Rights Strategy was a monumental achievement for disabled people. Now, our government much work to ensure that the strategy is implemented in our everyday lives. We are worth the investment, in every sense of the word.

As I said, October is a reflective time for me. I’ve now been blogging about disability rights for over eleven years. Am I still going to be writing the same things in another ten years’ time? God, I really hope not.

Tuesday Thoughts: Too Close for Comfort

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Do you ever find yourself looking at a date and trying to figure out why it’s important? That was me, squinting at my phone this morning. March 12. Holy crap. Why this suffocating feeling of dread? Have I missed a writing deadline? (I’ve missed several, thanks to my unpredictable mental health). Do I have some medical appointment? An important birthday? I checked my physical and digital diaries. No entries.

Some dates are just etched into the fabric of your psyche forever. And as I sat in the shower, a jolt of electricity awakened me, and suddenly I remembered. Funny, because there was a time that I never thought I’d forget. I can’t believe it’s been fourteen years since my life changed in many ways.

It was Friday, 12 March 2010. It was just under five months to D-Day, the day when my fiancé and I were due to declare our eternal love for each other. Our fathers had both made generous contributions to the proceedings earlier that week, and JP and I had decided that, rather than trusting ourselves to save the money, we would immediately pay off the entire wedding to alleviate the financial strain. To celebrate, we’d arranged to meet in Caffe Latte in Portlaoise for lunch, a rare treat after months of careful saving. I withdrew the money from my account and he brought it to the Credit Union to be made into various cheques. 

While I waited, I beckoned the waitress and ordered. As I watched her retreat behind the counter, I noticed two men at the next table, staring at me. Now, as a disabled fascination, I’m well used to being stared at, but this felt different.  Uncomfortable. I stared back to let him know that I’d clocked him. Usually whenever I do this, the offender looks away in embarrassment, but this guy didn’t. In fact, he seemed to stare harder.

When JP arrived, he started explaining what he did with the money and I told him to shut up, something I never do. I was worried that these guys were earwigging. He sensed my discomfort and asked what was wrong, but I couldn’t explain. Caffe Latte was bijou, and there wasn’t much space between tables. I just shook my head and wolfed down my lunch, mumbling “I’ll tell you later.”

After a rushed lunch, far from the relaxed affair that I’d been looking forward to, I decided that I needed to go for a cycle, to clear my head. I’d cycled from our house on Harpurs Lane to Lyster Square, the perfect distance for a quick workout. John Paul’s car was at home, so he could have easily walked beside me, but I insisted that I wanted a few minutes to myself. I darted in front of JP, calling “Hee-hee, I will be home first.” I cycled out of Bull Lane onto Main Street, stopping at Shaw’s to see if he was behind me. JP wasn’t. However, one of the men from the café was. And he was watching me. Following me.

At first I laughed at myself. What notions I had, that this lad was following me! Wasn’t I just full of myself? After all, I’d lived in Dublin for four years. Caught Luases back to Trinity on Sunday evenings. Caught 14As on summer evenings from Trinity out to Halls in Rathmines at 7, 8 o’clock. I’d never had hassle. So why would some random guy follow me home on a Friday evening, at 3pm in broad daylight? Yet, this was what appeared to be happening. The faster I cycled, the quicker he walked. At one point, I glanced down at the odometer on my tricycle. Fifteen miles an hour. That’s how anxious I was to escape. And he was still only a matter of metres behind me.

I darted under the railway bridge towards Harpurs Lane. Suddenly, I had the bright idea of cycling into the middle of the road, trying to stop someone to help. No-one did. Two cars pulled out around me, leaving me at the mercy of this stranger. By now, he was annoyed; he obviously hadn’t expected the speed. For months afterwards, I thanked God on a daily basis that I had the good sense to stay on that tricycle. If I had been walking, or even in my wheelchair, this story would’ve ended differently. I have no doubt about this. Later, when I learned who he was and what he was reportedly capable of, I no longer felt victimised. I escaped lightly. 

I stopped outside my house. My legs felt as though they would fall off. Then came the barrage of questions, with his face in mine. That’s why I will never forget what he looked like.

“Do you have money? Fags? A phone? Is this your house? Where are your keys?” He motioned towards my house.

At the time, my tricycle had a mechanism which meant I could cycle backwards. When I went to do so, a young girl who must have been following us was holding onto the basket so I couldn’t move. She wasn’t any older than twenty. I cycled into her and wriggled free, cycling back up towards the Mountmellick Road.  No sign of John Paul, and why would there be? As far as he was concerned, I was at home, tidying up so that we could take off to Tullamore and start paying off the wedding. Not wrestling with a stranger in broad daylight. I couldn’t go into my house. At least out in the open, there was a chance of someone spotting us.

I cycled up towards the Mountmellick Road again, my two would-be attackers following me closely. This time, John Paul walked around the corner to be blasted with my shrieks. The man slinked past us, not saying a word. Apparently, the girl said “I’m sorry” to John Paul as she walked past him.

It took until we were in the car to Tullamore to calm down and explain to JP what had happened. By the end of the evening, despite being shaken, I resolved not to let it define my life. I had a right to live in Portlaoise, and that was what I was going to do.

The next morning, back at home in Harpurs Lane, I heard a knock on the door. JP had already gone to work, and I was resting in bed. At the time, our house could easily be broken into, with old doors and single-pane windows, so I knew it wasn’t my would-be attacker. Still, I looked out the window before answering the door. It was a Garda who’d received no less than five calls about what had happened the day before, from people who had driven by. My attacker had been identified. He was known to the guards, a notorious heroin addict. But I was not to worry. The guards had warned him to stay away. He wouldn’t be bothering me again.

I wasn’t filled with confidence, but I was stubborn. No-one was going to dictate how I lived my life, and certainly not a stranger. So, I got onto my tricycle, and cycled into town. And I saw him. He diverted his eyes, but I know he saw me, too. And I saw him again as I cycled home. JP was with me; I’d met him after work. My legs were frozen with shock, and he pushed me home.

As I sat at home that evening, my mind went into overdrive. Was he watching the house? After all, he knew where I lived. He’d also be able to tell when I was alone, if JP took the car to work. After a full week of no sleep, we decided that the only thing we could do, to guarantee my safety, was move back to Tullamore, moving out of our cheap council house back into expensive rented accommodation. And with the wedding paid off, that’s what we did. We had family and friends here, who we could ring in an emergency. I’d never had to consider that before, and it felt so horrible and disappointing. Now, don’t get me wrong – we were going to move to Tullamore anyway, after the wedding. Our house was damp and I was constantly sick with chest infections. But it hurt that the decision was taken out of our hands.

I hadn’t thought about this incident for years, but it all came flooding back last autumn as I listened to Jozef Puska’s trial, for the murder of Ashling Murphy. Like many women across the country. I think of her often. She was only two years younger than I was when I was followed home. She, too, was planning a wedding with her soulmate. A beautiful young lady, going about her everyday routine in broad daylight. And although there was uproar after her murder, not much has changed and I doubt it will in my lifetime. At the time, there was much uproar about Jozef Puska’s nationality, but I believe that human decency – and indecency – are universal. My attacker was local, an Irish white male. He’d no reason to pursue me, just as that monster had no reason to brutally murder Ashling. And as I listened to that farce of a trial, it triggered memories of that March day. It’s not the same thing, I know. I wasn’t physically attacked. I wasn’t murdered.

That was down to nothing else but luck. And the women of Ireland deserve more than that.

The Lost Years – Tuesday Thoughts 2

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Two weeks ago, my husband and my daughter sat me down. They’d obviously been discussing something before approaching Big Bad Mummy (yes, I’m the bad guy in this house, which is always great fun). At first, I thought there was something wrong, but then Alison turned around and said the words I’d been expecting to hear for a while:

“Mum, I want to start walking to school. Not every day, but maybe two days a week…?”

“No way,” I snapped, with no hesitation whatsoever. “Are you mad? Too dangerous. You’re far too young.” And la-la-la, etc, etc, ad nauseum. My husband looked at me in surprise.

“Hon, it’s around the corner,” he reasoned. “Plus, she is eleven. She will be walking in secondary school, which is only a year away.” (That also stung hard. My baby is slipping away!) “We need to let her do it, learn how to take responsibility.”

I didn’t want to hear it. I flew into a silent rage and went to bed early, simmering because I hadn’t gotten my own way. But then I went on Google (of course) and was shocked to discover that it’s normal for kids as young as eight to walk as far, if not further, than our daughter was proposing to walk to school. And as I lay in bed, annoyed that Google had not taken my side, I realised that deep down, I don’t see Alison as an autonomous eleven-year-old preteen. (Well, sometimes I do. The mood swings don’t leave me much choice).

I admit that I’ve always been an overprotective parent, which is a direct product of the crippling anxiety that I’ve suffered from for as long as I can remember. Lately, however, while pondering how to allow my preteen some well-earned independence and keeping her safe at the same time, I wonder whether the pandemic affected the natural evolution of Alison’s independence. Is that why this sudden thirst for independence is such a shock to me – because of the lost time during lockdowns?

In the grand scheme of my own life, the three lockdowns we had in Ireland – from March 2020 to May 2020, from October to December 2020, and January to March of 2021 – don’t really matter. I was working from home anyway, I had a project to focus on (the compilation of Conversations about Activism and Change: Independent Living Movement Ireland and Thirty Years of Disability Rights), and I was involved in so many different organisations and advocacy groups that I often had two or three Zoom meetings a day. I soon got used to talking to friends over Zoom and Google Meets, even if I missed the intimacy of having dinner or a coffee together. All of this is now a distant memory, since we’ve supposedly returned to normal.

COVID has been around for approximately 1/13th of my life. But in Alison’s case, it has dogged nearly a quarter of hers. COVID struck the year of her Communion, meaning that the occasion was postponed and the party that we had planned, complete with in-house entertainment and seventy guests, was scaled back to a family dinner in the Tullamore Court Hotel (that said, Alison has about sixty people in her extended family alone, including aunts, uncles and cousins). Even when schools reopened in 2020, things were not the same: she still had to social distance, she could only socialise outside in the cold, and she had one friend who was allowed in our house, as part of her “bubble”. 

It seems like a lot to deal with, and I assumed she was pretty angry about it all. On Saturday night, when I was tucking her into bed, I asked her how she felt about the last three years.

“You must feel like you missed out on a lot.  Like your friends.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “For the first month or two, things were pretty hard, and I did find it lonely on my own. But it wasn’t all bad. You really pushed the schoolwork.” She laughed. “Honestly, I think I did more work in those six months than I have in the whole of primary school. And I enjoyed the challenge.”

“So, are you saying that you didn’t mind lockdown?”

She laughed. “I never want to do it again, let’s get that straight. But,” she paused, “we did lots of things that we just don’t get time to do now – the art, the baking, building forts, the movie nights.”

“And you don’t feel annoyed about any of that? About the things you missed?”

“Nah,” she shrugged. “We spent time as a family, even if we did kill each other sometimes. What’s the point in being annoyed, when life is much better now?”

I went to bed on Saturday night, pondering on how her unexpected answers were going to change the trajectory of this blog. And instead of dwelling on the psychological damage she’s supposedly suffered over the last three years, I thought about the things that Covid has given her. Alison is a prolific reader, having read everything she could set her hands on during the course of the pandemic. Once I manage to wangle her Switch from her, she loves writing her own stories, going for walks and playing football and camogie on the green. Occasionally, she’ll complain that she’s bored, but I think that has more to do with the age she’s at (eleven – not quite a child, not yet a teenager). Over the next few years, she’s going to face some of her toughest challenges – fitting in, discovering who she is, dating, and growing up in a world obsessed with social media.

But I wonder now if the whole Covid experience had lasting advantages as well. Alison has become an expert at dealing with disappointment, with making do with the circumstances facing her. She’s had Covid four times: one bout resulted in her missing a gymnastics competition, and she came down with it before Christmas 2022, causing her to miss her class Christmas party. Both times, there were tears for about ten minutes, then she dusted herself down and focused on getting herself better. She isolated on her own, not wanting us her parents to be sick too, and just sat it out. Reader, could you have endured that isolation, at the age of ten? Even with all the TV, books and Nintendo Switches in the world, I know for sure that I couldn’t have.

And maybe – probably – I’m making something out of nothing, as per usual. Perhaps, I’m just using Covid to deflect from my sadness that my little baby is growing up. And truth be known, even if time slowed to a snail’s pace, I was never going to be ready for it.

Go Easy

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I’ve grown up a bit since starting this blog. A few short years ago, when I wrote a blog for mum’s birthday, I mentioned my disappointment in failing to secure Adele tickets. I knew every word to her new album 25. But oh, how priorities change! Although my daughter is almost ten, I’m not as time-rich as I’d envisioned. I still have to parent, albeit it has become easier physically (though trickier emotionally – the joys of parenting a preteen, what with monitoring screen-time and conversations that turn into mini-debates). I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even had time to listen to Adele’s new album, but I’ve heard “Easy on Me” and it’s definitely a message that I want to scream at the top of my lungs.

World, go easy on me. No, that’s not what I want to say. I want to say: Sarah, go easy on yourself.

Almost twenty-two months. It’s been almost twenty-two months since the “old normal” disappeared overnight. The end of February will mark two years since Covid19 reached us here in Ireland. None of us could have imagined how much would change between then and now.

We were resilient then. We were prepared to do whatever we had to in order to curb the spread of this new virus. We stayed at home and worked in our pyjamas. We homeschooled the kids, against all of our wills. This was only going to be for two weeks, to flatten the curve, we were told (but nobody believed this). Our children saw out the end of the 2019/2020 school year at the kitchen table. On the day that the first lockdown was announced, our daughter had just brought back into school her consent form for her school tour, an indication that none of us really foresaw what was about to happen. On Sunday 8th March 2020, I stood in the Church at a pre-First Communion mass with a group of parent friends, speculating about this virus that we assumed was millions of miles away.

Four days later, Leo plunged us into lockdown, and the rest is history.

You know all this. I just wonder is anyone else where I am now. I feel exhausted, absolutely worn out. Like my daughter who is waiting in anticipation of Santa, I’ve been a good girl. I’ve done everything I’ve been asked. I’ve barely been anywhere in two years. Being captive in my own house, I willingly got involved in many activist groups (namely with ILMI, which I loved), and I gathered a collection of activists’ stories, which kept my mind from wandering into dangerous places. At first it was just for fun, but I never was one for doing things by half. I refused to acknowledge the glaring warning signs of burnout.

And I’m sure burnout is a common phenomenon. I’d imagine that those in the medical profession, who quickly discovered the meaning of the word “vocation” would scoff at the rest of us using that word. But that’s how I feel right now-completely burned out. I’ve written many times about how writing is my go-to tool in times of mental distress, but it is incredibly difficult to be in a creative mindset when the media is constantly reminding you that just as we get a handle on this pandemic malarkey, things change again. If you turn off your notifications, your partner or someone you randomly meet in town is always willing to bring up the dreaded “C” word.

To be honest with you, I’m at the point now where I would gladly shut out the world for a while and chill watching telly all day in my pyjamas. I’d love to remove myself to somewhere remote with a stack of books and read, write and sleep without interruption. I’d love to be on a train to Dublin for no other reason than to meet friends, eat good food and talk shite before heading into the city to look around the shops and buy unnecessary shite. I could still do this if I wanted to, I suppose, but it’s not the same. There’s always that undercurrent of fear. It’s not difficult to see why the so-called “conspiracy theorists” become so annoyed at the mention of restrictions. Some of these restrictions don’t even make sense. Mixed messages from the media, it’s all enough to make your head melt.

And the pandemic isn’t the only thing occupying our minds. We’re still working, raising our kids, caring for loved ones. We’re still experiencing the everyday drudgeries of life: bills, sickness, bereavements. It hasn’t been an easy time. So if you feel exhausted right now, I reckon that sounds about right. 

And if you feel this way, you are not alone. This cursed pandemic is far from over, but I say it’s time to indulge in some serious self-care. Turn off the news, turn off your phone, take a deep breath and go easy on yourself. 

We need to look after ourselves, and each other now.

Poem: The Year 2020

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It was the year of solid promises that crumbled away like dust,
Of rising temperatures and gremlins sitting on our chests.
Nothing to listen to but the echoing of our own self-doubt,
Watching careful plans fade away like ink on yellowed paper.
It was a year of suspicion, devoid of hugs or handshakes
When the mechanical birds of flight stayed snug in their hangars
The skies devoid of the faint white handwriting
Diaries of excited travellers in flight.

A year our children were subjected to education
By underqualified, panicky idiots who swore that they weren’t born for this.
The glare from the screens washed their immature brains
With worlds of fantasy – none as scary as this one.
No more was a cough or a fever a mere infection
No more could those we loved most be trusted.
We eyed each other with suspicion. Are they from the same household?
Who are these heathens spreading this new alien disease?
to hide the fear, we joined the zoom calls and the google meets,
Recreated the pubs from our sitting rooms,
Lying to ourselves, telling ourselves we’ll be together at Christmas,
One day, some day, this will all be over

Those voices haunt me at night, like a pile of unfolded laundry-
Will my daughter grow up without my nagging?
How long will my fragile china mind hold itself together?
What will be written on my tombstone?
Assuming of course I won’t be turfed into the fire-
Who knows how many skeletons will lie disappearing into the soil
Their faces covered to hide their pain?

It was a year we’d all sooner forget
Except we must always remember
How we were reminded of how insignificant we were
And how little we really are. How humbling!
A weight off our overburdened shoulders.
Why take ourselves so seriously?
It’s been proven that nothing is permanent
Not even pain.
We will smile again when we and the world heals
Together, as one.

2 1 2021

Academic Essay: Discuss the challenges facing the Independent Living Movement since the onset of the recession

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I am sharing this essay to outline why I am so vehemently supporting the #PASNOW campaign.

 

Discuss the challenges to the realisation of the Independent Living Philosophy in Ireland since the onset of the economic recession.

 

The philosophy of Independent Living was intended to be the cornerstone of the provision of Personal Assistance Services in Ireland. In its truest form, as noted by Morris (1993), independent living is about recognising that each individual has something to offer and that disabled people have “the right to assert control over their lives” (p21). The philosophy is entrenched in the belief that disabled people should have the same quality of life as their non-disabled peers. Yet, there have always been challenges to the realisation of this philosophy in Ireland, and these have become more apparent since the onset of the economic recession in 2008. Berghs (2014, p272) notes that “in a time of austerity, where government budgets are being cut […] independent living or care in a community cannot be ensured”. Independent Living has enriched the lives of many disabled people in Ireland. Yet its philosophy remains at odds with Irish culture, which has historically favoured a charitable approach to funding disability services. In addition, the Personal Assistance service, considered to be the cornerstone of the philosophy, was almost eradicated in September 2012 and the right to access a Personal Assistant remains unprotected by Irish law. A study conducted by the European Network of Independent Living (ENIL) in 2019 indicated that Irish Personal Assistance Services are not perceived to be underpinned by the independent living philosophy (Mladenov, Pokern & Bulic-Cojocariu, 2019, p13). Additionally, many disabled people are incarcerated in hospitals and institutions in direct violation of their human rights. Of further concern to true “Leaders” or Personal Assistant Service users is the expectation that Leaders should rely on family members for their needs and the consequent strain this can cause to family relationships. In this essay, the ideals of the independent living philosophy will be weighed up against the current reality in Ireland, and it will be demonstrated that Irish culture and the independent living philosophy has always been, and remains, at odds with each other.

 

Firstly, in examining the challenges in meeting the ideals of the philosophy of independent living, it is important to outline what this philosophy entails. According to Bruce (1999), independent living shifts the perception of the disabled person from being an object of care “to a point where they acquire rights of full participation and equality” (p5). In addition, as Morris (1993) notes, the independent living philosophy involves “acquiring the skills and support necessary for severely impaired people to have freedom to live where and how we choose with full control over our lives” (p20). Traditionally, the Personal Assistant Service has been used as a tool by disabled people in achieving independent living. Personal Assistance dates back to 1970s America, when Ed Roberts and a group of disabled college students, collectively known as “the Rolling Quads” employed Personal Assistants which enabled them to attend university and subsequently gain employment. This led to the establishment of the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley in 1972.

 

 

It took twenty years for the philosophy of independent living to travel to Ireland. The European Network of Independent Living (ENIL) confirms that the establishment of the first Irish Center for Independent Living was instigated by disabled people themselves (Mladenov, Pokern & Bulic-Cojocariu, 2019, p13). Martin Naughton, who had spent his childhood in St. Mary’s in Baldoyle, came across the Center for Independent Living when he was travelling in the US during the nineteen-eighties. In an interview with Joanna Marsden, Naughton recalled his time in America and how he saw the potential to bring the philosophy to Ireland:

I began to think of all the people back home, many of whom I had semi-reared in some sense when I was in Baldoyle, who were living in institutions. The temptation to do something became too great and I felt the pull back home. (Marsden, 2010; cited in Conroy, 2018, p227)

The establishment of the Personal Assistant Service in Ireland was also the result of the retaliation of disabled people who were tired of having no control over their own lives. Naughton stated in an Irish Times interview in 2015 that in Ireland, a disabled person had traditionally been perceived as “someone to be cared for rather than cared about” (www.irishtimes.com). Conroy notes that one of the main reasons for the formation of the Irish Independent living movement was a reluctance on the part of disabled people at the time to continue living with resentful family members or in residential institutions. (Conroy, 2018, p229).

 

However, translating the philosophy of independent living into an Irish context has always proved challenging, especially within a predominantly Catholic culture that perceives disabled people as objects of charity instead of equal citizens deserving of rights (Toolan, 2003, p175).  A study entitled Extending the Boundaries was carried out in 2006 to examine the progress of the Independent Living Movement from its introduction to Ireland in the early ‘nineties. Dixon commented that:

While the experience of Independent Living has been broadly accepted as a positive one for disabled people, there is a concern over the uneven spread of this service provision, and a worry that the philosophy of Independent Living, which should underpin service provision, is being diluted. (Dixon, 2006, p17)

 

This quote suggests that there were challenges to realising the Independent Living Philosophy prior to the onset of economic recession. However, the philosophy has become further diluted since the publication of Extending the Boundaries. Given Ireland’s tendency to treat disabled people as “victims” deserving of charity rather than autonomous individuals in their own right, fundraising initiatives has always been the norm in many disability organisations, including RehabCare and the Irish Wheelchair Association. Toolan notes that “At the same time as disabled rights groups are looking for the enactment of disability rights legislation, charities under a ‘not for profit’ banner are projecting demeaning and dehumanising messaging in order to attract resources for their service” (Toolan, 2003, p174).  This conflict between the need for the Center for Independent Living to portray itself as a rights-based organisation and the requirement to secure funding for services came to the fore during recessionary times, with Irish disabled activists reluctant to portray themselves as vulnerable in order to secure funding. However the RehabCare and Central Remedial Clinic scandals, which revealed that charitable donations were being used to inflate salaries, is one reason why sustaining a charitable approach will not work into the future. Morris (1993, p7) states that the supposed dependency and inadequacy of disabled people is perpetuated through the inappropriate application of medical expertise and the growth of the charity sector, and the way disabled people are perceived within the charity model.

 

 

Indeed, the medical model, coupled with the charity model, has had a negative influence on the strength of the Independent Living philosophy. Since the onset of the recession, disabled people have been forced to portray themselves as dependent, passive recipients of services rather than equal citizens who can live independently with the help of a Personal Assistance service. This is at odds with the Center for Independent Living’s “rights not charity” mantra. Toolan (2003) notes that being drenched in the doctrine of Catholicism, Ireland has always leaned heavily on the charitable approach, being “a society that is far from comfortable with individual rights” (p175). This can be seen in the current provision of the Personal Assistance Service. Personal Assistance was initially introduced as a pilot project in 1992, funding for which came from the EU Horizon programme. Following the two-year pilot, the regional Health Boards (now the HSE) and FAS continued to fund Personal Assistance, but in technical terms, Personal Assistance still holds “pilot project” status, and seems to be allocated on an “ad hoc” basis, with the number of hours given to Leaders dependent on which CHO (Community Health Organisation) covers that Leader’s service. Contrary to what the philosophy of Independent Living advocates, a Leader does not have full control over the hiring and firing of their Personal Assistants (Mladenov, Pokern & Bulic-Cojocariu, 2019, p21). In addition, Leaders lack control over who works for them, and at what time, meaning that assistance hours provided are uncompromisingly rigid (ibid, p20). Presently, access to a Personal Assistant is dependent on an assessment which is usually carried out by a Public Health Nurse, which focuses on basic activities of Independent Living, such as washing, dressing and feeding. This medicalised approach goes against the social model on which the Independent Living Philosophy is based and, as noted by ENIL (Mladenov, Pokern & Bulic-Cojocariu, 2019, p25) personal assistants are not trained in the independent living philosophy. In addition, access to Personal Assistance is not treated as a human right (ibid, p13). Since the onset on the recession, tasks such as personal care have been prioritised over the need for help with household tasks, accessing employment and education, socialising and shopping. Jolly (2010) notes that attempts to control expenditure on Personal Assistance occurs when a government restricts “the tasks that a personal assistant can do, meaning the tasks that [the HSE or FAS] will pay for a personal assistant to do” (p7). This rationing of Personal Assistance is at odds with the aims of the Center for Independent Living, as noted by Bruce (2000): “From the outset CIL located its activities in the context of seeing disability as a rights and investment issue to enable disabled people to have the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers” (p11, emphasis mine).

 

During the recession, the right to Personal Assistant Services was constantly threatened by the government, and indeed the service continues to face the threat of cutbacks (Mladenov, Pokern & Bulic-Cojocariu, 2019, p14). In September 2012, the Minister for Health, James Reilly announced that twelve million euro would be cut from the Personal Assistance budget, showing government’s lack of understanding of the true value of the service. The decision was only reversed following a three-day protest by disability activists, calling themselves the “Leader’s Alliance”, outside the Dail. This radical action was necessary as the right to Personal Assistance currently has no basis in Irish law.

 

In reality, the fact that provision for Personal Assistance is not yet legislated for in Ireland means that the service remains vulnerable to cutbacks at any given time, at the discretion of the Irish government. In 2013, the Center for Independent Living Carmichael House (renamed Independent Living Movement Ireland in September 2018) proposed to legislate for Personal Assistance. On 7 May 2014, a motion was debated and passed by the Seanad to allow for the legislation of Personal Assistance (Independent Living Movement Ireland, 2017). The motion noted that this legislation would build on the Value for Money and Policy Review of the Disability Services, the National Disability Strategy and the Action Plan for Jobs 2014. The proposal for the legislation stated that

the purpose of Personal Assistance is to ensure that people with disabilities enjoy the same opportunities as all members of society, to ensure that they have the same choices as others, and to afford them the means to control how they wish to pursue their lives. (ILMI, 2017, p31)

Under the proposed legislation, it was suggested that Personal Assistance hours would be granted “without regard to any upper limit on the number of hours and without regard to the cost of the service or the means of the individual” (ILMI, 2017, p33). However, the proposal also advised that the Department of Social Protection should take charge of the funding allocation for Personal Assistant Services, raising concerns that the service may be means tested in the future, potentially leaving Leaders “worse off” in terms of the level of service they would receive (ibid, p13).

 

However, for reasons unknown to this author, the Personal Assistance Bill was never enacted by the Oireachtas. Passing this law would enable Ireland to uphold its obligations in the eyes of the United Nations. According to Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People With Disabilities (UNCRPD), “Persons with disabilities [should] have access to a range of in-home, residential and other community support services, including personal assistance necessary to support living and inclusion in the community” (UN, 2006, p14). Although Ireland was one of the first countries to sign up for the UNCRPD in 2007, it was the last country in the European Union to ratify it on 7 March 2018, after an eleven year wait. In response, Independent Living Movement Ireland initiated a #PASNow campaign towards the end of 2018. It involves encouraging individual Leaders to contact their local politicians and educate them about the importance of the Personal Assistance Service. In addition to encouraging the legislation of the service, the campaign also calls for a rights-based definition of a Personal Assistant, as well as outlining what distinguishes Personal Assistance from home help (Independent Living Movement Ireland, 2018). The #PASNow campaign evolved following research which found that a mere 2,200 disabled people in Ireland received a Personal Assistant service in 2017 (Conroy, 2018, p232). In addition, Conroy notes that almost forty-five percent of Leaders receive a mere forty-five minutes of Personal Assistance a day, which illustrates how narrow and medicalised the criteria for receiving a Personal Assistant has become. Given that a Personal Assistant has been described by many Leaders as “my arms and my legs”, Conroy notes that forty-five minutes is not enough time to allow a disabled person to live a complete life (Conroy, 2018, p231). Clearly, the fact that such a high percentage of Leaders have access to such little service demonstrates that Ireland does not yet perceive Independent Living to be a human rights issue.

 

In fact, Ireland remains far from recognising the rights of disabled people to live in their own communities, and this is evident from the high numbers living in residential institutions. Inclusion Ireland estimated that as of 2016, just over three thousand disabled people in Ireland were living in residential or congregated settings (www.inclusionireland.ie, Accessed 19 March 2019). Article 19 of the UNCRPD (UN, 2006) states: “Persons with disabilities have the opportunity to choose their place of residence and where and with whom they live on an equal basis with others and are not obliged to live in a particular living arrangement”. However, for many disabled people in Ireland, this is not yet a reality. The HSE report Time to Move on from Congregated Settings: A Strategy for Community Inclusion notes that between 1999 and 2008, more people moved into residential settings (693) than moved out of them into the mainstream community (619) (HSE, 2011, p3). It is evident that there needs to be more investment into Personal Assistance to allow people to move out of residential settings. Conroy (2018) states that Ireland is currently spending three times as much money on institutional and nursing home care than on “home care” (not necessarily Personal Assistance, as in its truest form, Leaders employ and direct their own Personal Assistants) (Conroy, 2018, p235). In 2015, Martin Naughton organised a three-day protest outside the Dáil following an announcement by Taoiseach Enda Kenny that four hundred and fifty million euro was to be invested into institutional living arrangements for disabled people. In his explanation about why the protest was organised, Naughton said

 

If the Government continues to go down the route of refurbishing and building home   care and residential settings, as they have announced, they will have to put people into those homes. We need to get away from this model of incarceration. (Flaherty, Irish Times, 2015)

 

 

It has been noted that Ireland finds it difficult to embrace independent living provisions, preferring instead to rely on outdated solutions such as residential institutions (Mladenov, Pokern & Bulic-Cojocariu, 2019, p18). However, the challenge in convincing governments to invest in Personal Assistance is not exclusively an Irish one. Speaking at the European Day Conference for People with Disabilities in 2011, UK activist John Evans feared that a potential effect of a lack of Personal Assistance was that it could once again give rise to a culture of institutionalisation (Evans, 2011). In an attempt to highlight this issue, disabled people across Europe partake in a biannual “Freedom Drive”, an initiative which was the brainchild of the late Martin Naughton, and began in 2003. The activists typically present their “demands” to the European Parliament, most notably the demand to close residential institutions and to legislate for access to Personal Assistance. Besides being in violation of Article 19 of the UNCRPD, Conroy (2018, p233-4) notes that the four main characteristics of living in an institution (“depersonalisation, rigidity of routine, block treatment and social distance”) are at odds with the philosophy of independent Living. In addition, being “warehoused” in an institution is often associated with a reduced quality of life as Maggie Hynes, a disabled British activist noted: “Institutions were places where people like me died in” (Hynes, 1983; cited in Morris, 1993, p22).

 

One example of the inappropriate use of institutionalisation in Ireland was the case of Julia Thurmann, whose case has garnered much media attention since 2014. Thurmann, who was hospitalised after contracting the ADEM virus, is now paralysed from the waist down, but is still able to work and would be able to live fully independently had she accessible housing and a Personal Assistance service. However, due to the fact she could not move back to her inaccessible flat on her discharge from Dun Laoghaire Rehabilitation Hospital, she has spent the last ten years living in a nursing home in north County Dublin. It was reported in the Dublin Gazette that Thurmann spends four hundred euro a month on taxis in an attempt to ensure that she is not isolated from her mainstream community (Pownall, 2019). At the beginning of this year, Thurmann was informed that accessible accommodation would be made available to her by the end of 2019, after an eleven year wait.

 

Another consequence of the failure to legislate for Personal Assistance is that it often leaves disabled people with no choice but to rely on family members for assistance. As a consequence, families become under strain, and disabled people cannot enjoy meaningful relationships with family members as equals. This is a threat to the independent living philosophy, as it reverts back to the notion that disabled people are objects of care instead of autonomous individuals. Morris (1993) notes that

In the context of economic inequality which accompanies physical impairment […] the need for personal assistance has been translated into a need for ‘care’ in the sense of a need to be looked after. Once Personal Assistance is seen as ‘care’ then the carer, whether professional or a relative, becomes the person in charge. The disabled person is seen as being dependent on the carer, and incapable even of taking charge of the personal assistance he/she requires. (Morris, 1993, p23)

It can be argued that portraying the disabled person as an object of care dehumanises both the disabled person themselves and those who care for them. The challenges facing family carers in Ireland have been highlighted over the last few years, most notably with an RTE documentary aired in 2017 entitled “Carers in Crisis”. One of the mothers in the documentary, Johanne Powell, who cares for her severely disabled daughter Siobhan, now in her mid-thirties, spoke about her reality as a full-time carer. In 2013, the Irish Times reported that Siobhan had been offered a place in a nursing home, which undermined Johanne’s request for home support so that Siobhan could continue living at home with her family (O’Brien, Irish Times, 2013). Although it could be argued that Siobhan is too mentally incapacitated to make any meaningful decisions over her own life, denying her the support she requires to remain in her own home evidently places strain on the mother/daughter relationship. In an interview on the Late Late Show in 2017, Johanne admitted: “I am bored, depressed, I want more, I want a life for myself” (www.irishexaminer.com, November 2016). Currently in Ireland, as noted by ENIL (Mladenov, Pokern & Bulic-Cojocariu, 2019, p18), a person’s eligibility for Personal Assistance is in part dependent on the availability of family members to assume ‘caring’ roles. This is problematic because aging parents who are currently caring for their disabled children cannot shoulder the responsibility alone, as the Carers in Crisis documentary demonstrated.

 

In conclusion, it is clear that the integrity of the independent living philosophy in Ireland has faced significant challenges since the onset of the economic recession. It is important to remember, however, that these challenges will not be eradicated by financial investment alone. Those who wish to truly embrace the Independent living philosophy need to have confidence in their own ability and power. In addition, they must reject the association of disability with charity and embrace their rights to the various supports they need in order to live independently. However the reality is that the status quo regarding Independent Living in Ireland will remain until Leaders themselves are truly empowered, through the implementation of legislation and the adoption of a rights-based approach, to make decisions affecting their own lives.

 

 

 

Bibliography:

Berghs, M (2014) The Global Economy of Care from Swain, J, French, S, Barnes, C and Thomas, C Disabling Barriers – Enabling Environments (3rd Edition) London: Sage

Bruce, A (2000) Towards A New Millennium (Independent Living Movement Ireland) www.ilmi.ie

Conroy, P (2018) A Bit Different: Disability in Ireland. Dublin: Orpen Press

Conroy, P, Dixon, S & McGrath, C (2006) Extending the Boundaries: Our Experience of Independent Living. Dublin: CIL Carmichael House.

European Network on Independent Living (2015) European Network on Independent Living: Personal Assistance Services in Europe 2015 from www.enil.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Personal-Assistance-Service-in-Europe-Report-2015.pdf

Evans, J (2011) Rights and Social Inclusion or Cuts and Social Exclusion (speech given atEurope’s Way out of the Crisis: The Disability Rights Perspective  European Day Conference for People with Disabilities Brussels, December 1st 2011) from https://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/library/evans-The-impact-of-the-austerity-measures-on-disabled-people-in-Europe.pdf

Flaherty, R (2015) “Disability Protesters Disappointed after Meeting Taoiseach” from the Irish Times Online: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/disability-protesters-disappointed-after-meeting-taoiseach-1.2356009 Accessed 10 March 2019

HSE (2011) Time to Move on from Congregated Settings: A Strategy for Community Inclusion www.hse.ie

Inclusion Ireland (2016) http://www.inclusionireland.ie

Independent Living Movement Ireland (2017) Center for Independent Living Leader Forum Consultation Report: Personal Assistance Services from https://ilmi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Personal-Assistance-Report-2016-.pdf

Independent Living Movement Ireland (2018) Campaign for Personal Assistance  https://ilmi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ILMI-Personal-Assistance-Campaign-Leaflet-min.pdf

Irish Examiner (2015, author unknown) “’You grieve for the child you thought you were going to have’ Johanne Powell talks about life as a carer” from https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/discover/you-grieve-for-the-child-you-thought-you-were-going-to-have-johanne-powell-talks-about-life-as-a-carer-765894.html Accessed 20 March 2019

Jolly, D (2010) Personal Assistance and Independent Living: Article 19 on the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Leeds University Archive

Mladenov, T, Pokern, Y & Bulic-Cojocariu, I (2019) PA Checklist – A Tool for Assessing Personal Assistance Schemes. https://enil.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Mladenov_Pokern_Bulic-PA_Checklist.pdf?sfns=mo Brussels: European Network on Independent Living

Morris,  J (1993) Independent Lives? Community care and Disabled People (Part 1) London: Macmillan (accessed on leeds.ac.uk/disability-archive)

O’Brien, C (2013) “HSE offered disabled woman place in nursing home despite  wishes of parents” from the Irish Times online: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/hse-offered-disabled-woman-place-in-nursing-home-despite-wishes-of-parents-1.1416012 Accessed 14 March 2019

Pownall, S (2019) “45 year old Julia hopes her 10-year stay at a nursing home is at an end” from the Dublin Gazette online https://dublingazette.com/news/news-fingal/julia-swords-38924/ Accessed 19 March 2019

Ratzka, A (2017) Self-determination for Persons with Extensive Disabilities through Direct Payments for Personal Assistance from the Independent Living Institute:https://www.independentliving.org/docs7/Self-determination-direct-payments.html Accessed 1 March 2019

Toolan, D (2003) An emerging rights perspective for disabled people in Ireland: An activist’s view from Quin, S & Redmond, B (eds) Disability and Social Policy in Ireland Dublin: UCD Press

United Nations (2006) The United Nations Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities www.un.org/disabilities/documents/convention/convoptprot-e.pdf Accessed 10 March 2019

Silent Footsteps

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I’ve been trying to get out  of the house more lately. It’s good for my mood and my mental health. Luckily, Tullamore town park is only around the corner from us so on Friday evening, Alison and I walked down, as we often do. I had read in the paper that there was to be a gathering that evening for families who had lost loved ones to suicide, and that those affected had been invited to bring a pair of shoes with them to represent those who had died so tragically. Thinking it’d be a tiny affair (Tullamore is no city) we bought a pair of runners to represent my childhood neighbour Paul and another childhood friend, Frank. When we arrived at the park, I was taken aback by the depressingly sizable crowd in front of us. I had explained to Alison that we were honouring those who had died.

“Like my nannies?” she’d asked. (She loves hearing about her nannies).

“Er, not exactly,” I replied.  What the hell was I doing, bringing a child to this event? “We’re remembering people who died because they were just tired of life. There’s sickness of the body, and sickness of the mind. Sometimes your mind gets so sick that it believes it can’t get better… and sometimes it kills people.”

I reflected upon my pathetic explanation. Don’t explanations like mine only serve to perpetuate the problem, that we have become so ashamed to vocalise our feelings that sometimes we just… don’t? We don’t want to be a burden, so we spend day after day alone, saying nothing to anybody. We worry that we won’t be believed. Or we keep quiet because we know Mrs So-and-so is going through their own shit and she has it way worse. Whoever coined the phrase “first-world problems” should be shot.

As I listened to the prayers, my eye wandered to the line of shoes in front of me. The line was so long that I couldn’t see the end of it. That frightened me. These shoes belonged to people in our town – ordinary people with ordinary lives – who were living with a massive gap in their lives. Suddenly, I became overwhelmed with an emotion that almost suffocated me. It was sadness, mixed with pain and self-hatred. Suddenly I realised why I had subconsciously wanted to be there, even though I wasn’t representing an immediate family member.

I was representing… me.

It’s almost been five years since I had deep, suicidal thoughts. Five years since I took a handful of pills, despising my own cowardice when I couldn’t bring myself to take enough to kill myself. Five years since the night when I told my husband I didn’t love him and wouldn’t he be better off without me and didn’t Ali deserve better. Five years since I bashed and cut every inch of myself in a bout of self-hatred so inexplicable that I can’t explain it accurately now that I am calm. In my eyes, I had failed. I was a crap parent, and shite at my job. I felt constantly tired, even though “I only had one child”.  Some people couldn’t even have children and here I was acting like an unbelievable knob, ungrateful for what I had. All I had wanted was to be dead.

And sitting there, looking at the shoes, part of the reason why suddenly occurred to me. We have distanced ourselves from each other. The cost of living is ridiculous, so in an average household both partners must work, often ludicrous hours. Where is the time to have a meaningless natter with your neighbours? And speaking of neighbours, we don’t know our neighbours anymore (stupid housing crisis). We keep ourselves to ourselves. My parents bought a house back in the ‘eighties and that was our forever home, but people can’t do that anymore. And we knew most of our neighbours; in fact, all of us kids had best friends who were also our neighbours. People are not able to put down roots: not those in houses where the rents are constantly climbing, and certainly not those in hostels or hotel rooms.

I began thinking: if things are so bad (and make no mistake – we are beyond crisis point here) then why are we too proud to reach out to each other? Why are we wasting time trying to  pretend we have the perfect lives on social media when we need to be talking more, empathising more, encouraging each other more? When will we learn that the perfect life we aspire to has been airbrushed into existence, and that happiness is more important than perfection? And why, in spite of the “It’s ok to be not oks” and “mental health is real healths” are we still not taking it seriously?

I resolve to take mental health more seriously because those empty shoes frighten me. So let’s go for coffee. Come over for dinner, or chocolate – or both. If you ever need to chat, I will not judge. I will listen as best as I can.

Don’t assume that what you left unsaid will be heard. Trust me, people will be glad you said it.

It’s those unsaid words that haunt us the most in the silence.

 

 

Post Election Manifesto (Poem)

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You knocked on our doors wearing a smile,
Said that you wanted to talk for a while,
Assured us that you understood our pain
and that in trusting in you, we had everything to gain.
Then as the door closed with us safe behind
Did we really remain in your minds?
Could you really know what our smiles were hiding
As your manifestos through our letterboxes you were sliding?

Black eyes by a fist who wanted to show who was boss;
An empty cot owned by a mother suffering a loss;
A child who didn’t have breakfast that day;
A young man who can’t make those voices go away;
A lonely but beautiful lady who can’t seem to stop drinking –
When you were ringing those doorbells
What were you thinking?
How were you going to gain our trust
In an Ireland viewed by many as cold and unjust?

You could promise the moon and the stars
But we won’t believe you’re not running up your tab at the bar.
While you attest that things will change in your name
for many of us our reality stays the same,
We still struggle to keep the roofs over our heads
(the lucky of us that is – spare a thought for those in hostel beds),
while working our fingers down to the bone
and spending our evenings feeling overwhelmed and alone.

And that – mo chara – is the biggest problem right there –
That people these days just don’t seem to care!
Young people in nursing homes, families with nothing to eat,
Thousands of people out on the street!
For a country obsessed with unity, all we do is divide –
Never has the gap between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ been so wide.
And it’s so hard to believe that the country is broke
When the powers that be get six-figure paychecks
(unlike ordinary folk).

So if you are in government, and you’re reading this crap,
It’s time to stop letting Bertie and Enda take the rap,
The future of this country rests in your hands
And we’re counting on you to meet our demands.
Don’t say it’s impossible, that your hands are tied,
Instead think of the tears your people have cried.
One person can’t change the world, it’s true,
But if you speak up for the voiceless, others will too
And maybe, just maybe, our faith in Ireland will renew.

 

An Open Letter to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

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From the desk of Sarah Fitzgerald (the views are my own and do not represent the views of any other disabled person or organisation).

An open letter to An Taoiseach, Mr Leo Varadkar,

Dear Mr Varadkar,

I hope this letter finds you well, or at least as well as you can be, given the current state of affairs. You don’t know me, and it’s unlikely you’ve heard of me: I’m just another BIFFO from the bog, like your predecessor, Mr Cowen. We’ll probably never meet face to face, and it’s a safe bet to say that it’s unlikely you’ll read this letter either. But it would somehow make me feel better to explain to you how I feel about today’s budget.

Firstly, it would be amiss of me to overlook the remarkable progress that has been made in Ireland over the last year for people with disabilities. After an eleven year wait, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities was finally ratified. It was a wonderful, surreal moment, and your Minister with Responsibility for Disability, Mr Finian McGrath, should be very proud. But I’m a bit of a sceptic, and ratifying this precious document should only be the first step of a radical shift in attitude towards people with disabilities in this country.

Taoiseach, I have lived as a disabled person all my life. I am deeply aware of the horrific history of disability throughout the last century, not just in Ireland but worldwide: involuntary sterilisations, mass murders during the Second World War, people growing old in the back rooms of their parents’ houses, their very existence a taboo secret. In some ways, times have changed: we can live out in the community now (if we can access it), we can be educated in mainstream settings and not just in sheltered workshops, we can even get married and have children provided we are hardened against being told that we will always pose a risk to the little people we love most. This has been my narrative for as long as I can remember.

In the last ten years, another narrative has come into play, one that can be summarised as ‘budget cuts.’ You don’t need to be ‘au fait’ with the UNCRPD to agree that the recession had reversed the progress of the Irish Disability Movement to the extent where it has left us visibly shaken as a community. In 2005, I learned about the ‘philosophy of Independent Living’ and was surprised to learn that the expert on living with disability was… me! I learned how to trust myself, how to allow myself to make good and bad choices- something I’m still learning, truth be known. And it’s only now, ten years later, that I can see disabled people starting to trust in themselves and have the confidence to use our own voices.

As part of a collective of over six hundred thousand people in Ireland, I would respectfully ask you and your government to start seeing spending in the disability sector as an investment in our future and the future of this country. We are willing and ready to contribute, yet only thirty percent of us are in employment. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is down to a lack of investment in Personal Assistant Services. Now, when I talk about Personal Assistant service, I mean a service where we, the disabled people, are regarded as the ‘boss’ or managers of this service, a service where we get to pick what needs to be done, when and by whom. Cutbacks over the last ten years has led service provision to be based on a ‘medical model’ which focuses on the level of impairment rather than the level of ability of the individual. Priority in service provision is currently given to physio and personal care. So at the moment, a number of disabled individuals in Ireland are literally being helped out of bed in the morning, only to sit around in their wheelchairs all day, seeing nobody else until somebody comes back in the evening, often at half seven/eight o’clock (my daughter, who is six, goes to bed at half eight) to put them back to bed. The terms ‘carer’ and ‘Personal Assistant’ are used interchangeably by our government and the HSE.

Of course, people aren’t just trapped in their own homes. They may be considered by some of the three thousand people living in nursing homes and long-term stay wards in hospitals to be the lucky ones. Unfortunately, because of a lack of accessible housing and Personal Assistants, many people, including a thousand young people, are living in these settings, which is in direct violation of Article 19 of the UNCRPD. A significant investment in Personal Assistants and housing is badly needed. Life is too short to be incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit.

I am a thirty-four year old wife and mother, a freelance writer and a die-hard believer in the Independent Living philosophy. I don’t want to be taken care of, or (controversially) to be overly safeguarded. I want to make mistakes, to embrace life, to live up to my potential. I shouldn’t have to downplay my abilities din order to get the support I need to make a real contribution to our society. I shouldn’t have to choose between conserving my energy for writing or having energy to parent when, with the right support, I can do both really well.

I shouldn’t have to ring my local train station twenty-four hours in advance of train journeys, and still cross my fingers in the hope that I’ll have assistance on both sides of my journey. You know the feeling of relief when the plane you’re flying on touches down at your destination? That’s how I feel when I arrive at the train station to find a ramp waiting for me.

And Mr. Varadkar, I am sick and tired of living this way. Being an activist is tiring. People are getting annoyed with me saying the same things over and over again. I get asked all the time: wouldn’t I rather write about puppies, or chocolate, or gardening? The answer is yes, of course I would. Sometimes I wish I didn’t give a shit, that my blood wouldn’t boil as I read about yet another young person trapped in a hospital, or my peers choosing between heat and food because their Disability Allowance only covers the basics of living. And yes, I’m angry – if this was your reality, you’d be angry too.

Today, I urge you to invest in us, to help us change the narrative of oppression, to enable us to contribute to Irish society in a meaningful and tangible way.

Finally, to paraphrase my good friend Shelly Gaynor, we’re not looking for anything special, just an opportunity to have the same quality of life as everyone else.

You owe it to us, our families and our children, to enable us to live the best lives possible.

Yours, etc.

Sarah Fitzgerald

Is Activism A Dirty Word?

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Is ‘Activism’ A Dirty Word?

Every so often, I face a dilemma. It usually happens when I’ve taken on too much with writing or disability-related stuff and I find there’s just not enough hours in the day to do everything, which I find quite frustrating. It’s times like this where I find myself staring at the laptop screen, my finger hovering around the ‘delete’ button where the file that my so-called ‘novel’ is saved under. At these times, I’m ready to rip down this blog, pretend it never existed, start again.

It’s been quite a busy year, and hopefully it’ll continue to be busy for the rest of the year. In a bid to leave the disability world behind and fully embrace the world of writing, I joined the board of CIL and decided that I needed to take promoting the independent living philosophy much more seriously. (I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either). With every day that passes, I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the world around me, a world that I have worked hard trying to fit into. When another HIQA report is released detailing the shortcomings in residential homes, I roll my eyes, rant about it on Facebook, even write blogs about it.

Lately, however, I’ve been wondering: when it comes to fighting the status quo for people with disabilities in Ireland, am I copping out? I know I joke about being an armchair activist, but is that what I am – someone who’s good at talking the talk but reluctant to take any real action?

And is it because I’ve been conditioned to believe that no-one likes an ‘angry crip’, that no-one will ever take me seriously as a person or a writer if I choose to persistently bring so-called ‘disability issues’ into the mainstream with this blog?

I didn’t identify as an activist for a long time for this reason. I also felt like I had no right to identify as an activist. Looking back at all the great activists throughout history, they are great because they achieved something tangible. One of my greatest heroes, Ed Roberts, is the reason why many of us enjoy Personal Assistance today. During the ‘eighties, a group of wheelchair users in the US stopped buses and climbed up the steps to highlight how inaccessible they were. I love to hear such stories of radicalism, being a tad of the dramatic disposition myself. These so-called ‘radical’ actions brought about the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990. Two years later, the first Irish Center for Independent Living was set up in 1992. These were real, remarkable achievements.

About a month ago, I watched a programme called In From The Margins, which was produced in 1993 but may as well have been filmed last week, such is its relevance to 2018’s disability politics. It followed Ursula Hegarty’s transition from residential care to a home of her own, and what struck me the most about the programme (aside from the late Donal Toolan having an abundance of curly black hair!) was that the issues Ursula faced are still facing people living in hospitals or residential homes today. It’s estimated that around three thousand people with disabilities in this country are living in residential homes or care settings, sometimes against their will, which is in direct violation of Article 19 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities. We know this because there are articles written about it sporadically every few months. Invariably there is uproar, and then it dies down.

Of course, these issues don’t cease to exist just because they’re not in the public domain anymore.

A friend of mine alerted me today that a guy called Kevin was talking to Joe Duffy on Liveline so, despite being in the library at the time, I immediately tuned in on my phone. Kevin, who was formerly a solicitor but had to leave his post early due to his MS, has been living in residential care in Dublin for the last thirteen and a half years. He is fully corpus mentis, but is lonely – in his nursing home, many of his fellow residents have dementia or Alzheimer’s, and therefore are unable to engage in conversation. He spends a lot of time in his room watching telly, and is so bored that he ends up going to bed early.

‘This is frightening,’ I texted my friend after listening to Kevin.

‘If it were any other sector of society there’d be uproar,’ she wrote back. ‘I try not to be an angry activist, but… Jesus!’  And there were those awful words, angry activist. What we strive not to be. Because no-one likes to listen to people drone on and on about the violation of human rights. We should be nice crips, smiling, not complaining all the time. After all, how are we ever going to be equal if we always point out our differences?

We have been conditioned to believe that anger is a bad thing, that we should be grateful for the progress that’s been made already, that protests are undignified and a waste of time, but history illustrates the opposite. So what are we afraid of? If you believe that one person, or a group of people can help change the world, then who are you waiting for? That person is the same person who looks back in the mirror at you every day!

You may be unpopular. You may feel alone. But you are an activist, so that’s par for the course. And my friend reminded me of a great quote, by Edmund Burke:

‘The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to say nothing’.

I’d choose activism over evil any day. Wouldn’t you?