Children who are kept tied to cots and adults who are starving and freezing in institutions in some EU applicant countries can be helped by the Irish people voting Yes. This was the message yesterday from a new voluntary alliance formed by individuals and major organisations working in all areas of disability in Ireland to campaign for a Yes vote.
The chairperson of the Disability Alliance for Europe, Ms Angela Kerins, said yesterday that members of the group had visited institutions for people with disabilities in some applicant countries where children were constantly tied to beds, the weakest starved to death due to lack of food and others froze to death because of insufficient clothing.
"We have met five-year-old children locked in a cot their whole lives, sometimes as many as five to a cot, neglected, unloved and lacking in basic care. A Yes to Nice will enable these applicant countries to join the EU and make the resources available to end this ongoing human catastrophe." Ms Kerins said 10 to 20 per cent of people in the applicant countries were disabled.
Mr Christy Lynch, who has visited a number of the orphanages and institutions said: "There are literally people dying every day and will continue to die if we do not vote Yes, if we do not speed up the process where their governments will be forced to raise standards of human rights, to have access to the best expertise, the EU Social Fund and equality legislation. Their lives are in our hands."
They could not name specific applicant countries as their members would not be allowed back to the institutions again, he said.
"In applicant countries, in the disabilities movements and in the orphanages and institutions that many of us have links with, the people there are very clear. They see the decision as being down to the Irish people," Mr Lynch said.
He had visited an orphanage where disabled four-year-olds were kept in one room and had never been outside in daylight. In another institution in the middle of nowhere there was room after room of the "most filthy, horrible conditions", children tied to cots, old men with disabilities in a tiny room with two beds for four people, the stench of urine and faeces in the beds, he said.
Mr Frank Flannery said an issue missed in the last Nice referendum debate was that of human rights for people with disabilities. "If the Irish people vote No, at a minimum it will massively delay progress, chaos will arise and years will be lost. Tens of thousands of lives will be lost, destroyed and blighted," he said.