REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE INDEPENDENT LIVING CONFERENCE CROKE PARK
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE INDEPENDENT LIVING CONFERENCE CROKE PARK, DUBLIN TUESDAY, 5TH JUNE
It is good to be part of The Independent Living Conference 2007 and I am very grateful for David Egan’s kind invitation. A warm “Céad Míle Fáilte” – a hundred thousand welcomes – to all those who are here to participate in what is a very important debate and a special welcome to those visiting us from overseas. In this room is a powerful mix of experience, wisdom, insight, ideas and expertise. It is an invaluable resource as we work towards a society in which independent living for people with disabilities is as natural, as spontaneous, as mainstreamed as the air we breathe.
I have a wonderful friend who was born profoundly deaf a little over fifty years ago. His parents were told by the experts of the day that his life chances were generally poor and the best they could hope for was that he might aspire to a lowgrade trade, something that didn’t require much intellectual ability because, of course, their considered, and manifestly daft, opinion was that the deaf lacked not just hearing but also intelligence. Today he is one of the leading American academics in disability law. He holds degrees at undergraduate, masters and doctoral level. He is a much revered and very brilliant university Professor. Thank God for parents who challenge and by-pass so-called experts, thank God for experts who listen and learn and teach, thank God for people with disability who confound all those wise and well intentioned people whose paternalistic care would keep them imprisoned in dependency and in underachievement, thank God for conferences where we can deeply scrutinise our society and plot a course to make it a place where those who live with disability can live as freely, as gloriously independently as their hearts desire.
So many lives are only half-lived through lack of opportunity, lack of choice, too many obstacles, too little help, too much of that lazy old thinking which used to say things like - you can’t do that because you are a woman, you can’t do that because you are in a wheelchair, you can’t do that because you are blind, you can’t because…… What awful arrogance to dare impose restrictions on the life chances of another human being and what a waste of talents and skills it can lead to - for the individual, for his or her family and for all of us as a community.
There can be no quiet acceptance of that arrogance and no putting up with the obstacle course it has created over many generations of skewed thinking about disability. That is why this conference is so important, because the road to freedom from that obstacle course is only partly travelled and we need to keep asking ourselves what more needs to be done to open up that road, to make it straight, to make it the best motorway to the future.
It is reassuring to see how much progress has been made in recent years. We have seen the emphasis shift from a culture of complete dependence to one of effective supported independence. Much of the credit for this achievement goes to the work of the Centre for Independent Living, first established in Carmichael House back in 1992 and now grown to 26 centres nationwide. All of these centres are operated by people with disabilities, advocates for their own cause, the most powerful champions of arguments which they alone understand best. When they speak of choices, rights, empowerment and control, who among us has the experience or standing to trump their life’s story? Today it is those voices which are driving the agenda that is solving the many problems faced by those with disability and at the same time educating the public, lifting our levels of awareness, dispelling our ignorance and showing us the potential our limited imaginations have failed to notice.
If there is a growing recognition by all of us of the enormous contribution that people with disabilities make to social and economic life in Ireland, then the disability sector can take pride in the success of its advocacy. If there has been progress towards a more person-centred approach, increased State investment, movement away from institutional settings to community-based services, then the people in this room and those involved in disability lobbying can take a bow. The evidence of change is mounting in the new facilities, the greater sensitivity, the new laws and policies on equality, education and access to facilities, services and information. If anyone thinks these advances would have happened without the active, persistent pressure and determination of Ireland’s disabled citizens and their supporters, they have not done their homework.
Today Ireland aspires to equal participation for people with disabilities. We have seen the benefits of an ambitious State investment programme providing new residential, respite and day services and new community-based mental health facilities. We have grown in admiration as disabled sportsmen and women have achieved huge success. We have taken pride as they have excelled in the professions, the arts, politics or simply in overcoming their limitations day in and day out in a thousand ways that would be unremarkable in the life of a non-disabled person but which are stunning and remarkable in the life of a disabled man or woman. We have begun to loosen up the life-diminishing structures and the rules created primarily for the non-disabled by the non-disabled but which impact so cruelly on the lives of the disabled. One size fits all is no longer acceptable. So what is acceptable, what is needed, where do we need to focus our energies, what works, what doesn’t, those are the questions you will wrestle with and out of your distilled wisdom will come the ideas and networks which will develop to the full the vision of The Centre for Independent Living. So the journey is not ended but it is surely well and truly begun and in the next generation, the cleverest, most problem-solving generation of all will, with your guidance, give us a country to be proud of for both disabled and non-disabled alike.
Enjoy the conference and may it be very successful.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.