The mother of a woman with Down's syndrome described yesterday how she felt betrayed and insulted when she read the Disability Bill.
Ms Frieda Finlay, who is also PRO of namhi, the organisation working to promote the rights of those with intellectual disability, told the committee she was the mother of 30-year-old Ms Mandy Finlay.
She said her daughter and her friends were regarded as second-class citizens. Since the day she was born her daughter had been an unequal citizen. She had depended largely on charity for her education, her training, her independence and her dignity. "When your child is born with an intellectual disability in Ireland, you move into a different world, a world where you have to fight for everything, a world where you have to learn to be grateful for every development.
"Because I've lived in that world for 30 years, I was delighted when I heard that the Disability Bill was to be published. Because I've lived in that world for 30 years, I felt totally betrayed and insulted when I read it," Ms Finlay said.
The one thing that living in that world taught was that people with intellectual disability were at the very bottom of the political queue. Services had been historically underfunded in good times and they were the first to be cut in bad times.
She thought the Bill would end that situation forever and finally lift people with a disability from the end of the queue and put them in a situation where they no longer had to beg for the dignity and equality everybody else took for granted.
"But when you read the Bill, with all its constraints and bureaucracy, you realise it will achieve nothing," Ms Finlay said. The Bill was "mean-spirited" and "lacking in anything like basic humanity" .