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“I LOVE being a student but the facts are that when I graduate my classmates are twice as likely to get a job as I am.”
So says Joanne Chester, an NUI Maynooth student who has been deaf since birth.
The Waterford native says she has struggled to access adequate supports and guidance for much of her time in education.
Discrimination against deaf people, including the lack of legal recognition for the Irish sign language, means she continues to be worried about her future.
Chester is one of four people featured in a new video from the Disability Federation of Ireland calling attention to the inequality faced by voters with disabilities.
She is joined by Owen Columb, who acquired a spinal injury in his early 20s.
“After a road traffic accident, I lost my independence,” he says.
My only option was to live in a care home. That was 1994.
Today, little has changed for people in my situation.
Joan Bradley, who also speaks in the video, lives with the late effects of polio.
Bradley is one of many people who suffered from the paralysing disease as a child before experiencing symptoms of the original polio again in middle age.
“I live a very active life but every week my disability costs me money,” she says.
I have to meet these extra costs myself.
Davy O’Meara is a young man who experienced mental health difficulties in the past.
“I’m doing great now but I know what it’s like to not feel OK and not know where to turn,” he says.
Quality services can be the difference between living and giving up.
Des Kenny is denied a secret ballot because he is blind.
“Everyone has a secret ballot. I don’t,” he says.
The technology exists but we don’t use it in Ireland.
Joe Feeley has a learning disability and receives support from Cheeverstown House in Dublin to live independently.
“I want to contribute to society,” he says.
I want to live independently. I enjoy my part-time job. If I had a full-time job I would lose my medical card and travel pass.
Frustration
John Dolan, the CEO of Disability Federation of Ireland, said the video shows “the real challenges faced by people with disabilities in Ireland”.
While capturing that determination [to campaign], it also captures the frustration at having to live with a lack of access to the services, supports and policy changes that are needed.
Last month, the organisation launched its DisableInequality.ie campaign to make equality for people with disabilities an election issue.
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Warehouse in Ireland please. Having to wait for parcels to ship from UK is not good enough.
Amazons high tech jobs are based in Dublin. The companies warehouses are based in Britain. It’s cheaper than Ireland.
Yeah that 1 day prime service is shocking! If I order something now I won’t have it until tomorrow ffs!
Amazon consider Ireland as part of the UK geographicaly for business reasons while for delivery reasons they consider NI and The Republic to be the same.I worked there and it used to provide endless hours of fun trying to explain the situation to idiot ‘nationalists and unionists’ who would take offence to this.Then added to that for tax they are registered in Lux.Most likely they will open a hub here at some point but most items will still have to come from the UK. There just isn’t the population here to justify a warehouse system big enough to hold 17m items.
More people out of a job
“hiring 80,000 seasonal workers to meet the coming onslaught of holiday orders.”
are they? some might be out of a job running around the floor picking items. but someone has to look after the robots, repair them and even build them so jobs are created as well.
Simon,that’s a very short term view.
how so. remember back in the 80′s when computers were being brought into the office and work place and we were all supposed to be out of jobs?
Simon, they are doing a physical job that only people could do. You can be very sure that any of these working in these huge spaces will have a very long lifespan unlike anything that will be for sale in the future in PC World etc for the home.
Did you actually read the article?
” They are doing a physical job that only people could do” — bit of a contradiction there
I work in this area (electrical / mechanical IT support) if they have 3000 robots then they need a good load of people to back them up. I would very much doubt that 3000 people were let go to be replaced by 3000 machines.
Machines that run for 24 hours a day need weekly / monthly PM’s. Software upgrades, cleaning and replacing. so while they have a long life span they are continually being looked after unlike your house hold appliances that only get service when they break down,
Support jobs are also much better paid than picking jobs. And at the end of the day, shouldn’t we be using robots and machines to do the more mundane tasks and upgrading our human work force for the better.
Simon the robots will become self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th and repair themselves. Only a matter of time.
Jason,Simon. The PEOPLE that did this job last year are highly unlikely to be be servicing these robots. They have most likely been told that there is no work for them. Not everyone has the capacity to up skill. Amazon and those who follow them have not got the welfare of their seasonal workers in mind and are not trying impress ye, they have long term wage bill reductions driving this practice.
Its called progress….
Jesusdittyfcukinchrist they took are jobs !
To help the employees, who are they kidding. To CUT THE WAGE BILL.
PR*cks
Johnny 5
Irish Water is currently drafting up an army of robots in the form of precision electronic meters to “help” distribute something which is of a basic right.
Correction: “help” control something which is of a basic right.
Ffs, read this so as not to hear about IW, not everything should be brought back to water. Getting very boring now.
My thoughts exactly.
What are your thoughts, pray tell?
I am thinking he was just missing an ellipses…
His thoughts are centred around precision.
With everything getting automated and a growing world population, what happens when there aren’t enough jobs for everybody? A genuine question….maybe we will be starship troopers.
have your say