Disabled people have an unequal status in society due to a charity-dependent culture, according to Mr Donal Toolan, chairman of the Forum of People with Disabilities organisation.
Mr Toolan said the Government had allowed a situation to persist whereby charities had responsibility for funding and supporting facilities for the disabled.
His organisation yesterday began a campaign for the introduction of a law guaranteeing the rights of disabled people.
"Charities have filled people's heads with impairment . . . we have had decades of excluding people through the charitable process," Mr Toolan said. People with disabilities had been maintained in segregated schools and training centres, and this had created an unequal system. "The system doesn't equip people to live in society; it equips them to live in a segregated ghetto," he said.
Mr Toolan said the Government had spoken about social inclusion, but there was little evidence to suggest that disabled people were a priority. He s aid the 1996 report of the Commission on the Status of Disabled People had yet to be implemented.
Mr Toolan said legislation was needed to ensure that disabled people had the same rights to education and employment as everyone else. He added that there also needed to be a law which would give people with disabilities access to all buildings and transport.
He said disabled people were more likely to live in poverty, were unable to access most transport and had an unemployment rate of 80 per cent. While Dublin Bus operated 950 buses, he, as a wheelchair-user, could use only 20 of them, he said.
Mr Toolan said that the policy of employing a 3 per cent quota of disabled people in the public service workforce had failed. He added that segregated schools were still being built for disabled people and that the situation depicted in the States of Fear documentary remained a reality.