— June – July 2013
present, and convince people of, viable alterna-
tives which together constitute degrowth, and to
outline realistic strategies to get there.
These alternatives will involve a shift from jobs
that produce ‘goods’ for consumption to jobs that
maintain goods for use – a move away from capi-
talism which sees capital, and its maximisation, as
an end in itself. The change will value, and rejoice
in, service, care work and local provisioning. The
trend is already there (Davis ). Galbraith
() argues only % of employment is actu-
ally required for the production of goods.
Redistribution and predistribution will be
addressed in these alternatives. This will involve
a focus on the distribution of work (paid and
unpaid), care (paid and unpaid) and income.
Degrowth is about work not as an end in itself, but
instead it registers the type, quality and distribu-
tion of work. It is concerned with the distribution
of jobs, the length of the working week, the quality
of jobs, the care they provide, the education and
satisfaction they inculcate.
Some countries, including France and Germany,
have reduced working weeks as a strategy to man-
age the crisis. The EuroMemo Group ()
argues for a -hour week and Simms ()
argues for a -hour week – challenging the
fetishism of growth. This has specific gender
dimensions. Fudge and Owens () advocate
the restructuring of working time to decrease
stress, increase gender equality and facilitate
healthy work-life balance. Direct environmental
gains can be linked to a reduced working week
(Gough ).
Degrowth posits stronger employee represen-
tation, more effective government monitoring,
and the normalisation of reduced working time.
Social policy can become an agent of degrowth:
‘part time’ work can be supported through
changes in employment regulations (as in the
Netherlands and Austria). Changes in social wel-
fare can facilitate new forms of work (as in the
Nordic countries). Tax reform with refundable
tax credits can better support low-income work-
ers (as in many OECD countries). Redistribution
of domestic work across genders can be encour-
aged through paid paternal leave.
Investment should reorient towards social
investment and be imaginatively harnessed. For
example, the EU Social Investment Package (EC
), is intended to focus on employment in
childcare, preventative social services, education
and training, housing and health. Committing a
percentage of EU budgets to this social investment
should be a core part of the strategy.
Degrowth allows us to put the economy back in
its place, to re-embed the economy in the social
and political, through democratic action. Taking
the focus off growth means development will be
measured in more progressive ways, valuing care
and happiness. Ecologically there should be an
enthusiastic shift from a consumer to a recy-
cling society, and from planned obsolescence to
an economy of maintenance. Artificial demand
should be dampened by high taxes on advertising;
and self-serving consumerism diminished by ban-
ning billboard advertising. This has been effected
in Vermont, Hawaii, Maine, and Alaska.
Degrowth implies simplified lifestyles with less
individualism and more emphasis on the collec-
tive. The ethos of living within our means will
undermine debt-based growth. A life not dom-
inated by waged work will give us time to think
and act democratically and to foster more mature
power relations.
We have choices. The options we choose will
be a reflection of our values, of our vision and of
what we consider to have failed. We need to affirm
and promote values grounded in humanism and
the republican ideals of democracy, equality,
solidarity, participation, activism, transparency,
mutual interdependence and care, ecology and
sustainability.
The politics of making it happen will not be
easy. While Irish politics is now very volatile it is
not yet clear that we are experiencing the shift-
ing political cleavages that might lead to a radical
second Irish republic. But there is now an obvi-
ous opportunity driven by the present crisis and
the public appetite for optimistic and idealistic
commemoration over the next decade, to pro-
mote wiser values.
Any Irish republic worthy of the name will be
built on an active citizenry. New public spheres
and even new language will facilitate the move
towards a radical civic republic. We must start
by recognising through analysis the failures in
the current system to promote the shift in power
towards more democratic control of production,
and an orienting of that production towards
social and environmental agendas, rather than
profit.
Dr Mary Murphy and Professor Peadar Kirby are
authors of ‘Towards a Second Republic: Irish Politics
after the Celtic Tiger’ published by Pluto Press in 2011.
politics
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“
Today, care, love,
knowledge and nature itself
are all commodied. The
very essence of humanity is
monetised and marketised
“
Regulation, in this sense,
will be regarded as a
liberation, not a subversion
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— June – July 2013
W
HAT group in society is denied the
right to right to vote, make a will,
have sexual relations, travel abroad,
make medical decisions and marry?
At first thought it might be those incarcerated for
the most heinous of crimes. Yet this is the fate of
over , people who have committed no crime.
These are people with an intellectual disability,
serious mental health difficulties, dementia or
acquired brain injury.
It is incomprehensible that legislation allow-
ing this situation: the obsolete Lunacy Regulation
(Ireland) Act, , remains on our statute
books. The High Court continues to hear petitions
under this law. A person can be made a ward of
court under this law. Once made a ward of court, a
person is denied the right to exercise legal capac-
ity. Legal capacity refers to the capacity both to
have rights and, most importantly, to exercise
those rights. The denial of legal capacity has been
described as ‘civil death’.
The ward of court system reflects what is
referred to as the medical model of disability.
The medical model views people with disabili-
ties, including people with intellectual disabilities,
as objects for charity, in need of treatment or care,
and incapable of making their own decisions. For
years this model has informed disability policy
in Ireland. People with disabilities were hidden
away in institutions, segregated from mainstream
society. Today, almost , people with an intel-
lectual disability remain sequestered in these
institutions.
In December the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its
Optional Protocol was adopted at the UN General
Assembly. The CRPD reaffirms the right of all per-
sons with a disability to enjoy all human rights
and fundamental freedoms. It rejects the medical
model of disability. It views people with disabili-
ties, including people with intellectual disabilities,
as people with rights, who are capable of claiming
those rights and making decisions for their lives
based on free and informed consent.
The CRPD brings together the fundamental
rights contained in all other international human-
rights treaties covering civil, cultural, economic,
political and social rights. It provides the frame-
work for how these rights should be protected
and promoted, and posits a legal obligation on
governments to give effect to these rights.
The CRPD entered into force in May .
nations have ratified the CRPD and have
ratified both the CRPD and the Optional Protocol.
Ireland was one of the first countries to sign the
CRPD in March . However, it remains one of
the few EU Member States still to ratify the CRPD
though it is now under increasing international
pressure to do so.
The continued failure of government to
introduce Legal Capacity legislation means that
ratification of the CRPD cannot proceed. This
legislation has now been on the ‘A List’ of five
successive legislative programmes. These delays
call into question the government’s commitment
to the human rights of people with intellectual
disabilities.
The CRPD imposes an obligation on gov-
ernments actively to involve civil society in the
framework for national implementation and
monitoring. However, the committee estab-
lished to advise the government on the legislative
and administrative measures required to enable
ratification has no member with a disability or
representative from a civil-society organisation.
The CRPD should be ratified and incorporated
into Irish law without further delay. The active
and meaningful involvement of people with a dis-
ability and their organisations in preparation for
this ratification should now be facilitated.
The CPRD places a legal obligation on the gov-
ernment to introduce a framework for national
implementation and monitoring. At least one part
of this framework is required to adhere to the UN
Paris Principles for the independence of National
Human Rights Institutions. The government has
given a commitment that the new Irish Human
Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) will
meet the requirements of the Paris Principles. It
is essential that the IHREC be designated as the
independent body to monitor implementation
of the CRPD.
Jim Winters is Advocacy & Rights officer with
Inclusion Ireland, the national advocacy organisation
for people with an intellectual disability.
politics
jim winters
‘Civil death’ for people with
intellectual disabilities
People with an intellectually disability need their internationally-recognised
equal rights, including to legal capacity, not charity
“
The committee established
to advise the government
has no member with a
disability or representative
from a civil-society
organisation
T
RAVELLERS don’t get much of a men-
tion in the Programme for Government.
That’s what happens when you are a
small minority, times are harsh and
equality is quietly slipping off the agenda.
Travellers might have taken consolation from
the commitment to “tackling Ireland’s economic
crisis in a way that is fair, balanced, and which
recognises the need for social solidarity”. If any
Travellers did, they must be well disillusioned
by now.
Pavee Point recently published research by
Brian Harvey that concludes that the headline
figures on the effects of austerity policies on
Travellers “tell an egregious story of an extraor-
dinary level of disinvestment by the Irish State
in the Traveller community”.
Overall, government spending has dropped
by .%, from 1.bn in to 1.bn in
. In the same period government spending
on Traveller education was reduced by .%,
on the special initiative for the employment of
Travellers by %, and on Traveller accommo-
dation by %.
The one mention Travellers got in the
Programme for Government was a commitment
to “promote greater co-ordination and inte-
gration of delivery of services to the Traveller
community across government, using available
resources more effectively to deliver on princi-
ples of social inclusion, particularly in the area
of Traveller education”. Political promises must
be one of the most devalued currencies in this
financial crisis.
Traveller education has not fared well. The
Visiting Teacher Service was closed in ,
the system of Resource Teachers for Travellers
in also, and thirty-three Senior Traveller
Training Centres in . Interagency activi-
ties supported by the Department of Justice and
Equality were closed down in .
The Pavee Point report highlights not only
reductions in expenditure but also significant
underspends in all these areas. In the period
from to only % of the fund-
ing allocated for Traveller accommodation, for
example, was spent by local authorities. This
cannot be justified by reduced need. There were
, Traveller households identified in
as needing accommodation.
There has also been an extraordinary
increase in the number of Traveller families
being dispersed in private rented accommoda-
tion over this period. Seven per cent of Traveller
families were in private rented accommodation
in . This figure has risen to % in .
Dispersal isolates Travellers from their wider
family and community networks and removes
them from a context where their culture is lived
and affirmed.
This calls to mind the Report of the
Commission on Itinerancy – a report that has
been discredited as racist and assimilationist.
The Commission stated “it is not consid-
ered that there is any alternative to a positive
drive for housing itinerants if a permanent
solution of the problem of itinerancy, based on
absorption and integration is to be achieved”.
In the search for funding to cut, it is always
easiest to start with those areas where the back-
lash will be limited and isolated from any popular
support. The government has also taken steps to
ensure any such outcry is muted. The funding
for national Traveller organisations has been
reduced by .% between and . In
the same period funding for Traveller commu-
nity development projects has been reduced by
.%. The voice of Travellers has been under-
mined and their ability to resist these cutbacks
has been diminished.
Across society, communities and their
organisations have increasingly turned in on
themselves and their own issues. This has left lit-
tle room for solidarity and shared action. There
has been a failure to mobilise for equality. As a
result, there is limited popular demand for this
value to animate Government.
Maybe, though, it is payback time. Over the
last two decades Traveller and Traveller organi-
sations made significant progress in highlighting
the racism experienced by Travellers and in
asserting the ethnic identity of Travellers. The
administration gave some ground under pres-
sure but the old thinking never went away.
Crisis has provided the opportunity to reassert
this old thinking. In the short-term, absorp-
tion is cheaper than recognition. The
Commission report never went away.
politics
niall crowley
There’s something about
government and Travellers
Spending on Travellers has been smashed, and their voice drowned by 64%
cuts to their organisations
Government cares little, and less
“
From 2008 to 2012 only
64% of the funding
allocated for Traveller
accommodation was spent,
though there were 1,824
Traveller households
needing accommodation
