Remember I’m a snowflakeGraham, I’ll get upset and cry.
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Ha… butter wouldn’t melt 
No, seriously Jane, I get reet peeved off with the notion of PC speak… people “apologising” for some-ones loss, for example, when in reality they couldn’t care a flying fuck and wanting to rewrite history because what really happened is “inconvenient” 
There’s no moral or other value judgment in ‘handicapé’ it just acknowledges an incapacity of one sort or another - it isn’t used as an insult in the way that for example ‘spastic’ was in my youth by the yobs.
I think it depends as it does in so many cases on both the nature of the handicap and whereabouts you are, as to how you get on. My first cousin has 20 year old twins one of whom is 99% blind and has cerebral palsy which affects his legs*, he is currently at a good university reading history, his brother is at the same university doing something else.
- He walks and rides a bike etc but it has required massive amounts of painful and intensive therapy and botox injections in his legs etc over his entire life. School has been possible thanks to new technologies and a specially equipped collège and lycée.
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Wise words expressing what I was trying to impart not quite as succinctly as you have managed @vero 
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I wasn’t ascribing value judgements, it is just if you come from a place where the word “handicapped” is no longer used then it takes a bit of getting used to.
I quite possibly am getting mixed up! I think my worry was having Irish passports (well dual British citizenship) and never having contributed to the Irish social system. I left Ireland at 4 years old to live in Cyprus, then to the UK in my teens. I wasn’t sure how that would reflect on applying to the French system.
Thanks for all the replies. Very helpful.
Worrying “ishoo” declarations from you both @JaneJones and @graham : by admitting getting “reet peeved” and “upset and crying” your are sailing dangerously close to the weasily wind of psychiatric taxonomy, which details thousands of “mental health ishoos”, any one of which can quickly lead (via a testimony from a NOK and a sympathetic shrink) to a locked seclusion room and a hefty bum-full of Haloperidol to keep you out of circulation for up to a year.
“Mental health ishoos” is an area where everyone is a weasel-worded expert and an ishoo-diagnosis can easily lead to a one-way ticket to a privately-run tax-payer-funded NHS gulag, staffed with black-unifomed key-swinging minders sit in impregnable plexi-glass cubicles watching the “mental health ishoos” shamble round in small stupefied circles waiting for their next 15 minute airing and a cadged drag at a shared ciggie.
Believe me, I’ve been there, not so very long ago, in a "professional’ capacity.
Not a joking matter. Whether it’s different in France is a moot point, and I have an open mind, though the ‘parole vigneron’ (if the concept has currency*) tells it’s own story. 
- late addendum, I see ‘par téléphone arabe’ is the phrase that eluded me
I have an S1 from my competent state 
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The word doesn’t carry the same bagage. I was handicapée when I had tennis elbow because I didn’t have the normal range of movement in my arm, people would say ‘ah je vais t’aider, tu es handicapée’ when they know me perfectly well and that I am not in fact permanently disabled. Not having a driving licence, if you live in the country, is handicapant.
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You will only be entitled to an Irish S1 if you are in receipt of an Irish pension Denise.
My son has Apert syndrome, dual sensory impairment and breathes through a tracheostomy. The latter we are hopeful will be removed following surgery soon. But, he would benefit greatly from sunnier climes that’s for sure.
Thank you again. Much appreciated.
Good luck to him and to you too Denise. Another advantage of living France is the excellent healthcare.
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Thanks John. I don’t have an Irish pension and we won’t be of pensionable age when we move either. My husband is a carpenter in the TV and film industry, we would be looking to setup in France.
It is from what I’ve been told 
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Good decision Denise, cead mile fáilte. I wish you all the best.
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Thank you 
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And I’m in the health system without one. Not having access to an S1 isn’t the end of the world, people are not goin* to lose out on healthcare as was implied.
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Yes of course, but my point is that for me, in moving to France, it was another thing on list of cultural adaptations. Having for many years expunged the word from my vocabulary as i said it made me twitch to hear it again.
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Faux amis aside so many words just don’t carry the same weight - my poor mother who is a southern French mathematician (so not reading literature in English, which helps to troubleshoot) discovered this to her cost in the 1960s translating ‘con’ directly, my father and his silly friends thought it was very funny and never put her right (you might have thought Cambridge undergraduates would be less immature).
Your disabled son, even though an adult, might well fall in the category of “dependants à charge” for the purposes of healthcare cover (and probably also taxation), so would be covered under your (your husband’s and/or your, top-up healthcare cover).