Once the Political and Communications Director of the Labour Party and now Chief Executive Officer of Barnardos in Ireland, Fergus Finlay spoke with a regular contributor on disability issues to Indymedia about the current situation with regard to the rights of people with disability in Ireland.

Extract: Finlay also agrees that part of the problem is that too many people are docile about arguing their corner or protesting about the situation. “People are still affected by shyness and shame about having disability in their families. A lifetime of being endlessly patronised and talked down to has resulted in a constituency of people who have ended up absorbing the attitudes which they meet and applying them to themselves. I once made the observation to the Irish Association of Psychiatrists that there is something in their training which causes them all to think that parents of people with disability are probably ‘not all there’, either. While it’s not the case that there are no services – there is some provision, of course, and some people do manage to find adequate services - but the bottom line in all of this is that families and individuals are mostly like square pegs trying to find the occasional square hole into which they can fit.”

He continues “there is an antediluvian perception of disability based on the medical model - provision is not based on the principle of responding to the need – the culture with disability is still a culture of charity. It does not start with the idea that there is a right and of course there is the common experience of a lot of people which is that if you raise your voice you will be threatened - look at the treatment meted out to the O'Hara family, for instance.”

Hundreds demonstrated today against Fine Gael’s worrying proposal to make Irish language education optional, and no longer compulsory.

The demonstration was kicked off at the main gates of Trinity College at lunchtime, and so was witnessed by large crowds of sympathetic spectators as well as participants.

Hundreds marched to the headquarters of Fine Gael, to shouts of “Fine Bearla.” When the group arrived at Fine Gael headquarters, party leader Enda Kenny emerged to address the crowd. He received jeers from the crowd when he told them that removing the Irish language requirement would actually help the language. In an act of dispcicable cowardice he then fled from the crowd when someone from Ogra na Gael got up to speak.

Some observers such as "Fear Bocht" are unimpressed:

There is nothing intrinsically progressive about Irish; in fact the cultural snobs and elitists have often used it to look down on the working class. Nor has it anything especailly republican about it; I'll think you'll find Wolfe Tone did not have a word. For those who want to speak it, learn it and teach it, all facilities should be given but compulsion did not and will not work.

Extract: An idea or rather an image bubbles up in my head of a human being held in one of the prisons for captives in the “War on Terror” - their sense of self slowly disintegrating under the pressure of uncertainity, torture and fear. I try to articulate what I think about Guantanamo. My heart is pounding and I am stabbing the air with my finger.

Meanwhile the same lackey is continuing to repeat his demand that we condemn Republican violence. This is absurd. I had expected grubby debating society tricks, oily pragmatism and weasel words but I wasn’t ready for such lazy contempt and a sheer inability or unwillingmess to argue for the merits of his decision on refuelling at Shannon.

Unexpectedly one of the retinue makes a coherent point about the plight of the Kurds and I begin talking to him. Bertie is still looking up and down the street though and his prayers are answered in the form of a beetroot faced man with a bristling moustache, a stocky little black dog and more than a couple of jars inside him.

The subject of this opinion piece submitted to Indymedia Ireland is Anjem Choudary (also known as Omar Bakri Muhammad), a Muslim cleric who was born in Syria, participated in the 1982 revolution against the Syrian Ba'athist regime and was later given political asylum in the UK. He spoke at a debate in Trinity College on Thursday night. Choudary is well known for his extremist Islamic views and was leader of Al-Muhajiroun, an organisation whose eventual goal was to prepare the way for a global Islamic theocracy.

Choudary's remarks pointed out something in blunt terms which anti war campaigners have been saying since 2001, when it became common knowledge that Shannon was being used as a refuelling base for US warplanes. He said that "if you allow Ireland to be used to refuel US warplanes which are going on bombing raids, what do you expect the reaction of the Muslim world to be? This is not neutrality. It is better for the Muslim world to tell you this reality, so we can change this situation, and to make sure what is taking place in other countries will not happen here in Ireland." His remarks were in the context of his argument that Ireland is open to attack by terrorist groups, because of its support for the Bush administration's war on terror.