Josie Muscat against housing disabled at St Luke's

Azzjoni Nazzjonali "absolutely disagrees" with the MLP's idea of housing persons with disability in a restructured St Luke's Hospital, saying their place is in the community, where they would be taken care of by their families.

AN leader Josie Muscat expressed his firm belief, from years of first-hand experience, that persons with a disability could be taught to play their part in society, without being a burden on those who took care of them.

He maintained that it also made more economic sense to help their families, rather than pump millions into another "modern monster".

According to AN's manifesto, family members who took care of dependent elderly relatives would benefit from an income tax rebate. The benefits could be extended to couples where one was suffering from an illness like multiple sclerosis and had to be looked after by the other, Dr Muscat said.

The idea was to incentivise families to look after their elderly, though he agreed it could give rise to abuse - something the AN is totally against.

Whoever dared to abuse would pay a harsh price and would never dare again, setting an example, Dr Muscat said. "Every abuse is a form of theft and what is wrong has to be stopped," he said of the fact that social benefits have to be reviewed as they have become a burden on society and on the hard-working citizen.

Dr Muscat does not agree that governments should shoulder all responsibility and stressed that AN is against handouts.

At the same time, the country could not be stingy towards persons with disability. Society was obliged to help them even more since they were not to blame for the problems they were born with, he said.

Children with disability had the right to the same educational assistance, meaning facilitators in independent schools should be paid by the government, as in the case of Church and State schools, he said.

The founder of Eden Foundation, Dr Muscat pointed out to those who have painted him as "uncompassionate" that he placed 120 persons with disability into the labour market, rather than just leaving them with a disability pension and forgetting about them as had been happening.

Speaking with emotion about a subject clearly close to his heart, Dr Muscat said "a country can only boast of success depending on how much it can help those who fall behind in society, particularly children with disability".