REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE CEREBRAL PALSY IRELAND 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE CEREBRAL PALSY IRELAND 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION ROYAL HOSPITAL KILMAINHAM
As Patron of Cerebral Palsy Ireland, I am delighted to join you this evening for the 50th anniversary celebrations. My thanks in particular to Dr. Thomas Gregg for his kind invitation and warm welcome.
This truly is a celebration – a celebration of the enormous difference that Cerebral Palsy Ireland has made down through the years in the lives of so many people. This includes not just those with cerebral palsy and other disabilities, but also their families and friends. Indeed we have all benefited, for this organisation has deeply influenced our understanding within Irish society as a whole, of people with disabilities, of their needs, their rights, their hopes.
Tonight we pay tribute in particular to the vision of Dr. Robert Collis, who founded this organisation fifty years ago. He is remembered by those who knew him as a genuinely gifted visionary, a man of creativity, unshakeable self-belief, single-minded in pursuit of his goals and with a sense of mission to assist the oppressed and neglected. Perhaps he can be best summed up with the following words of Christy Brown, in his tribute “Remembering a Friend”:
“………you strode rather than stepped through life
crushing many a demure bloom in your career
yet with the blunt sensitivity of one
trading not with images but imperatives………”
It is appropriate that one of the inspirations behind Robert Collis’ decision to study cerebral palsy and set up the first clinic, was meeting a child who brought home to him, in his description, “the terrific drama of a human soul imprisoned within an almost functionless or at least abnormally functioning body, yet breaking forth and apparently overcoming insurmountable difficulties”. That child was Christy Brown, whose artistic and literary success against all odds, led to his becoming one of Ireland’s best known representatives of Cerebral Palsy, and a personification of the triumph of determination over adversity.
Dr. Collis needed a similar level of determination to realise his mission of setting up a clinic to help. Undeterred by the refusal of funding from an uncomprehending and inflexible officialdom, Collis secured finance from the Marrowbone Lane Samaritan Fund towards a premises and part-time physiotherapist. A committee was formed and a daily clinic opened under the direction of Dr. Louis Warrants in the Dublin Orthopaedic Hospital in Merrion St. Later, it moved to more suitable premises in Bull Alley Street, which Christy Brown described as “ a very posh place indeed compared to the old clinic”.
In its early years, the Association, through the use of physiotherapy and speech therapy, opened up a new world for people with cerebral palsy. Only a few years earlier, the lack of understanding of the condition, and fears that it might even be contagious, meant that highly intelligent individuals were often confined for life to grim psychiatric institutions. Only the faith and courage of individual parents, such as Christy Brown’s mother, protected children from the hostility and incomprehension of an ignorant, fearful society.
Gradually the work of the Association and the determination of parents began to pay off. The growing demand for the treatment of children outside Dublin led to the establishment of the first residential centre. In the early 1950’s, a further milestone was passed when the clinic, now based in Sandymount, was recognised by the educational authorities and became the first school in the country for disabled children.
The Association continued to expand, with a clinic opening in Cork in 1955. By the 1980’s, a branch network had been established throughout the country. This prompted the organisation to develop its own strategy for the provision of regional treatment and assessment centres for children and young adults with a physical disability. Its range of services now includes education, medical consultancy, social work, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. The social and developmental needs of individuals have not been forgotten, with training, workshops and sports facilities.
But its real success has been in dragging public attitudes up a bumpy learning curve, insisting that we listen while those who know best tell the story as it is, not as the mythmakers would have it. Out of that success has come respect for the rights of the disabled, space for their voice, and a humbler public!
Cerebral Palsy Ireland has genuinely been a trailblazer in providing services and raising awareness of the needs and rights of people with disabilities in this country. The very high level of professionalism and commitment demonstrated by CPI, and indeed many other voluntary organisations, is one of the unique features of life in Ireland of which we can be justifiably proud. The exceptional quality of service provided by the Association could not have been achieved without the dedication, determination and generosity of spirit of all who have contributed to the work of CPI.
I am delighted to have this opportunity to warmly commend all of you. I would like to mention in particular, Tony Jordan, Principal of the Sandymount School and Clinic and, after 26 years, the longest serving staff member of the Association. I was delighted to receive a copy of his book, “Christy Brown’s Women”, which charts both the development of the Association and the life and loves of Christy Brown.
As we approach the start of a new century and a new millennium, I believe we can look forward with confidence and optimism to the fuller integration of people with disabilities into all spheres of Irish life. The realisation of this aim is, after all, the basis on which Dr. Collis embarked on his quest fifty years ago. We need their gifts and insights, working as a lever, not from the margins, but from the mainstream, from the centre. We need all the talent God has given us, contributing to our understanding of ourselves and of our world. That understanding is imperfect, impoverished and skewed, and will be for as long as there are significant voices confined to the margins.
It is a tribute to those with cerebral palsy, and their families, whose courage and determination over the years has brought us this far, that that goal is now within reach. There is still a distance to travel, but with the help of organisations such as Cerebral Palsy Ireland, we are closer to realising it than ever before. Let us grasp that opportunity with both hands.
I am proud to be Patron of this organisation and I wish all of you continued success in your future endeavours.