Spin meets shame in the Sinnott case

The Irish political system is sometimes accused of being slow to respond to serious developments. This is unfair. At times of crisis, it can show an impressive sense of urgency. We are approaching, as it happens, the 10th anniversary of one splendid example of this ability to react decisively to a crisis.

A decade ago in August 1991, the members of the Oireachtas were recalled from their long summer recess to pass legislation that had been hastily drawn up by a Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrats coalition government to allow companies in trouble to go into examinership rather than liquidation.

The Oireachtas was recalled to rubberstamp it because there was a crisis in Larry Goodman's AIBP beef empire. Inconvenient as it might have been to those TDs and senators who had taken their holidays, big money was at stake. The government didn't think twice. It was all systems go.

Right now, there is a vastly more important crisis. People with disabilities, their families and carers are deeply distressed by last week's Supreme Court ruling in the Jamie Sinnott case. In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, the parents of some children with intellectual disabilities were talking about suicide.

For many, there is the indescribable weariness that comes when the last hope evaporates. For others, there is the intense bitterness of rejection. For some, there is just bewilderment, as people with autism who are now 19 or 20 but who were kept on in schools in anticipation of a favourable court ruling, find that they have literally nowhere to go.

Outside the disability community, there is a sense of shame. Shame at discovering that the basic values of our community, as enshrined in the Constitution, do not include a recognition that adults with intellectual disabilities have a right to fulfil their potential as human beings.

Shame at realising that Bertie Ahern really meant it when he said that the legacy of this golden time for the Irish economy would be a group of buildings, Stadium and Campus Ireland.

The Government knows very well that it has little public support for a policy of exclusion and neglect towards people with autism and other intellectual disabilities. It knows that the decision to appeal the High Court ruling in the Sinnott case does not have wide popular support.

In May 1997, Mary Wallace, who is now Minister of State for people with disabilities, told the Dail that even after the High Court had established the right of Paul O'Donoghue to an appropriate education "it was decided at the highest level to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. The uncertainty and pressure which this imposed on the O'Donoghue family was completely unacceptable."

The Sinnott case followed on directly from the O'Donoghue case, and one of the effects of last week's ruling is to undo Paul O'Donoghue's court victory. If it was completely unacceptable to appeal that ruling, it was just as unacceptable to appeal the Sinnott ruling.

Precisely because it knows this, the Government came up with a classic stroke - appeal the High Court ruling, but not the damages the High Court awarded to Jamie Sinnott for the State's refusal to educate him after the age of 18.

The political optics, in other words, required an approach (not taking back the money awarded to Jamie) completely at odds with the underlying strategy (getting the court to rule that people like Jamie were not entitled to such damages).

The most distinguished and experienced member of the court, the Chief Justice, saw through this strategy and refused to go along with it. The State's approach, he said, was determined by the fact that it was "unwilling to be seen as seeking a reduction in the award of damages" to Jamie Sinnott.

To put it in the less elevated language of politics, what was going on was a spinning exercise. The majority of the court, unfortunately, did not follow the Chief Justice's advice to resist the spin. Yet the very fact that the Government felt it necessary to engage in this elaborate PR exercise shows how uneasy it is.

It hopes that by not taking money from Jamie Sinnott, it will distract the public from the fact that it is taking away his human rights, and the rights of thousands of people like him.

It is trusting, too, in the short attention span of the media and the public. The Dail is not due to return until October. In the meantime, without a political focus, the groundswell of anger will subside into the general disgruntlement.

Maybe this calculation is correct. Or maybe, this time, the public will choose to exercise its immense but latent power. A public meeting at HQ in Middle Abbey Street, Dublin, at 7 o'clock tonight will demand a recall of the Dail to initiate a referendum on disability rights and an action plan on education for people with autism.

Kathryn Sinnott will be there, as will many of the people who have struggled for years to get their loved ones recognised as full citizens of the State. They will find out soon whether they must carry on that struggle alone.

fotoole@irish-times.ie