REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 50TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING & CONFERENCE OF INCLUSION IRELAND
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 50TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING & CONFERENCE OF INCLUSION IRELAND NATIONAL LIBRARY, KILDARE ST.
Dia dhíbh go léir inniu. Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Chairperson Frieda Finlay, Chief Executive Deirdre Carroll, Ladies and Gentlemen, members and supporters of Inclusion Ireland, thank you for the warm welcome and for the invitation to this 50th anniversary celebration of Inclusion Ireland.
Let us just wind the clock back for a moment to 1961 – the year that this organisation was born and christened with the name that seemed appropriate back then, The National Association for the Mentally Handicapped of Ireland. Thanks to your pioneering work and advocacy, attitudes, practices, laws and opportunities have changed dramatically over the past half century so much so that the expression “mental handicap” became rapidly outmoded, overloaded as it was with a baggage of bias and today we meet under the banner of Inclusion Ireland, a simple terminology that carries a broad, integrated vision for a republic of equal citizens where all have the chance to enjoy life right in the heart of the mainstream.
On this very day fifty years ago, Irish men and women all over the globe were celebrating the flowering of the full social and political inclusion of the Irish Catholic emigrant when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United States. Emigration had so decimated the population south of the border that in 1961 the population of the Republic was exactly twice that of Northern Ireland. In the five decades since, the Republic’s population has grown rapidly edging closer and closer to three times the current population of the North. Back then the introduction of free second level education was in the early stages of discussion. It would not become a reality here until the end of the decade. So if the truth be told it was the lot of many citizens to be excluded from opportunity and choice in their lives but none more so than those living with disability. For them an architecture of old-fashioned attitudes and low expectations existed which diminished their lives from the get go. We no longer inhabit that Ireland but neither do we yet inhabit the Ireland, the Republic of the fullest inclusion possible. We are however quite some distance down the road towards truly effective, real and lived social inclusion thanks to all of you and all of those who worked for this organisation over these fifty years.
Today we refuse to see a disability as a permanent ticket out of the mainstream. Now we actively work towards creating the conditions in which children and adults with disability get the chance to live full, happy lives, learning, working, training, socialising, playing sport, travelling, living independently and making their mark on society. Today many children with intellectual disabilities are educated close to home in mainstream schools. Many adults with intellectual disability have good, busy lives, lived on terms that encourage their potential.
In these disappointing times of economic retrenchment, when people are apt to make all sorts of claims about our nature and character as a people, it is no harm to remind ourselves that during the boom years this small island became the first place outside of the United States to host the Special Olympics World Summer Games in 2003. To do that we had to marshal a nationwide fundraising and volunteer effort that demanded phenomenal generosity and commitment on a scale never before experienced in Ireland. It came together like a symphony and through it we grew ever more aware of the unique and key contribution made to our shared communal life by our brothers and sisters with intellectual disabilities. Irish society moved rapidly up the learning curve.
So if at times you get discouraged by the pace of change or frustrated by what you cannot achieve in the short or medium-term, take the time today to remember how the course of history changed thanks to this organisation, not overnight the day it was founded but step by hard-won step. The radically altered landscape came about because of the work of very resolute, committed people who were determined that those with intellectual disabilities would no longer be invisible members of society, but active and very visible participants. Inclusion Ireland has played an important role in the milestones that are visible as we look back along the sweep of these fifty years. Each one vindicates the powerful focus that an organisation like this can bring to bear on our national consciousness. Each milestone shows how culture can change, how obstacles can be shifted by what Seamus Heaney describes in another context as “intelligences brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.”
Contemporary disability services in Ireland are now characterised by a strong partnership between all those involved in the planning and delivery of services for people with intellectual disabilities and their families, Government, the Health Service Executive, voluntary agencies, families and friends and most importantly those with disabilities themselves, many of whom are now well-trained and well versed in personal advocacy and communication skills.
It is still a hard road though for those with intellectual disabilities and for those who love and care for them. The structural, attitudinal, legal and systemic changes we have witnessed over these past fifty years have brought us so far, but there is a lot further still to go. We still need the champions, the advocates, the visionaries who can paint the landscape of the future and persuade us to do what it takes to get us there. In the month when our gay citizens can for the first time look forward to legal recognition of their relationships our Republic continues its journey towards a day when all citizens are truly, fully, included.
Thank you for constantly setting before us the ambition set out in our Proclamation - to cherish the children of the nation equally and the firm promise of our Constitution to uphold the equality dignity and the freedom of every individual.
Is iontach an obair atá ar súil agaibh agus guím gach rath oraibh sa todhchaí.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.