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Have something in spades11/21/2023 ![]() We recently saw trans activists organise a public protest at the National Gender Service (NGS) to complain about the allegedly conservative approach adopted by the NGS enabling trans people to access healthcare, including hormone treatments such as puberty blockers. These bodies use public money to campaign to influence public opinion on issues or to oppose those with whom they disagree. Remember them? You don’t hear so much about them these days.īut we now have the apparently irresistible rise of tangos – tax aided non-governmental organisations. ![]() Once there was general suspicion of quangos – quasi autonomous non-governmental organisations. But they fade into insignificance compared to a different phenomenon – the use of State-funded NGO proxies to advance political agendas through advertising and activism. This tendency to engage in virtue signalling is not confined subjects such as global warming or adult literacy issues. Is it really the function of An Post to take full page ads – no matter how striking – to support an adult literacy drive? There is also an enhanced trend towards greenwashing by all sorts of commercial entities. It was notable that the Covid pandemic seems to have legitimised policy advocacy advertising to an unprecedented level. They want delivery on those rights – not broadcast sympathy paid for by those who are failing to deliver. ![]() People with disabilities and people caring for them don’t need a patronising message that the disabled are human or that their rights are human rights. The Government party senators did not actually vote against their own amendment and thereby lose their party whip they simply foot-tripped it by a deft piece of parliamentary choreography, saving what could loosely be described as face.Īnd so now we have the radio ads on the same subject from the same Government just two months after its July embarrassment.Īm I alone in tiring of policy-promoting advertising by the Government on RTÉ radio and television? If RTÉ needs financial support (and it does need it), must that be done in part by political advertising? This postponement, coming at this time in the electoral cycle, was in effect a form of political euthanasia for the measure. Shortly before the Seanad rose for the summer, the Government tabled a Seanad amendment to the second reading of Senator Clonan’s Bill on July 11th, postponing further consideration of his private member’s Bill for a year. His Bill would impose a statutory duty on the HSE to deliver services to persons with disability rather that the existing HSE duty which only extends to conducting an assessment of the disabled person’s need for those services. But it brings to mind the inconvenient fact that the advertisement “brought to you by the Government of Ireland” is brought by the same Government which recently attempted to postpone further consideration in the Seanad of a B ill introduced by Senator Tom Clonan. Very few people would cavil with these sentiments. Because disability rights are human rights.” We all have a part to play in building a more inclusive society. Everyone who has a disability or who knows someone with a disability. It carries the message: “The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities matters to everyone. A radio advertising campaign on disability rights is currently under way “brought to you by the Government of Ireland”.
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