Fine Gael moved a Bill in Dβil private member's time to enshrine in law the rights of an estimated 350,000 disabled people.

The party's spokeswoman on equality, opportunity and family affairs, Ms Frances Fitzgerald, said the Bill provided for the appointment of a disability commissioner responsible for the drafting of a code of rights and their promotion and observance.

Ms Fitzgerald said a Government report had cited the Department of Finance as saying that it could not accept the underpinning by law, the provision of services for people with disabilities as a right because it would be prohibitively expensive.

"These financially virtuous sentiments are chilling in the extreme. People's rights can be vindicated if they are cheap. Do we really know the price of everything and the value of nothing ?"

She said despite Government commitments, and the recommendations of reports such as "A Strategy of Equality," change was coming about painfully slowly.

"This point is graphically illustrated by the fact that, in 1999, three years after its publication and acceptance by the Government, 80 per cent of the recommendations in the report remain unfulfilled."

The Minister of State for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Ms Mary Wallace, said the Government was opposing the Bill on the principle it was too narrow. "In contrast, we will bring forward a fuller Bill which will deal with a wider range of issues . . . and will require real action by the mainstream agencies whose job it must be to provide for all people: those with a disability and those without." Debate on the Bill resumes tonight.