If you think the disability bill recently passed in the Dail has nothing to do with you, you should think again. If passed into legislation, it represents a major assault on all our constitutional rights. This author has no political allegiance and is concerned with the interests of disabled people and the contribution they can make to the wider community. In that context and for reasons set out below, it is nevertheless necessary to say that Fianna Fail and the PDs deserve a roasting on this issue alone at the next general election.

For the second time they have introduced legislation that is in opposition to everything the disability lobby has asked for - and so desperately needs - and in doing so they are conducting a unique experiment in tampering with the constitution. If they succeed there can be no doubt that the bill will be used as a precedent for future legislation. The first attempt to introduce disability legislation in 2002 ended in disgrace amid an outcry from disability groups because of its inadequacy. Second time round, we were promised there would not be a repeat of the first fiasco - the views and wishes of people with disability were to be taken on board. A Disability Legislation Consultation Group was set up to include senior representatives from a number of disability bodies and for three years they toiled over the content and guiding principles of the bill. A comprehensive set of recommendations were submitted to the government by the DLCG. But the ‘consultation’ turned out to be a charade. The press release issued by the DLCG in May 2005 states:

‘This is now a totally flawed and fundamentally inadequate piece of legislation. It fails to meet the needs of the disability sector and we are appalled that the Government is determined to ram it through the Oireachtas in the face of opposition from the very people it was originally designed to benefit.’

It’s now clear that the consultation was a strategy for keeping potential opponents on side for as long as possible so that the time for effective protest would be minimised. At the time of writing, the Bill awaits the approval of the President who may refer it to the Supreme Court because of its constitutional implications. Whatever the President decides, the government are on notice: the disability lobby will not forget this. The government has, yet again, turned its back on the disability lobby.

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“What we intend to do on Monday, if they do not open, is picket from 6.30 p.m. to let them know that we will not be backing down. We are choosing that time for people who will be at their jobs during the day. If work resumes at the site we will start picketing at 11 a.m. The purpose of the picket is to persuade employees working at the building of the refinery to halt work, as some have done, and to show that we are not forgetting the five innocent men in Cloverhill prison.”: P.J. Moran, Ballinaboy Resident.

“WORK CONTINUES AS NORMAL AT THE COMPANY'S SITES IN MAYO” So reads the Shell press release of Friday July 1st. At the refinery site at Ballinaboy everything, mostly signs and flagmen huts, that was on the ‘oil road’ outside the site was cleared away by Shell-Statoil-Roadbridge-Sicim by 3.15pm on Friday, and inside machinery had stopped work by 3.30pm.

This morning in Rossport the truck illegally carrying pipes to the Shell-Statoil-Roadbridge-Sicim compound, which had been halted on the roadside since Tuesday the 21st of June, was removed after negotiations, and with that so ended a 12 day, 24 hours a day, roadside vigil, which highlighted the inadequacies of the developers traffic management plan, or rather its virtual non-existence. The truck left without entering the compound.