Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a great honour to be asked to represent my party at this meeting and to endorse this document. It was also a great honour to be asked to launch this edition of the guidelines regionally. It is a document that has been prepared in the kind of language people like us can understand. It is not a technical document, although it is sufficiently technical to allow us to understand the raw material and assume this was a deliberate strategic approach that was taken to compiling the guidelines.

I congratulate the witnesses on the publication of the guidelines and I believe their efforts today will be rewarded with the full support of committee members. It was an opportune time for the publication of these guidelines. The Irish Wheelchair Association has 20,000 members and 1,000 were sampled in compiling this document so it is a comprehensive piece of work. I acknowledge this on behalf of the committee and extend our gratitude to the witnesses and the Irish Wheelchair Association for their dedication and commitment.

Ambitious social and public housing plans were recently proposed so, as I said, the timing of this publication is opportune. Many committee members are aware of the complex nature of local authorities and the difficulties, costs and barriers that exist when seeking to adapt a dwelling to allow accessibility for those with limited mobility. Getting this right from the outset is essential.

It is vital that we have a comprehensive, understandable and user-friendly tool that will ensure cost-effective outcomes. That is in the interest of all stakeholders from the perspective of costs but, most important, it is in the interests of service users. Of course, getting it right at the outset is also far more cost-efficient for the Exchequer.

The question then is how we can build more comprehensive relationships among stakeholders and ensure this document is embedded as an obligation in terms of how we approach design. The delegates referred to the application of the local authority guidelines since 2010. I would be interested to hear about how they have evaluated their own success over that period in the context of how the 2009 guidelines have been implemented. How can we learn from what has happened since 2010 and how can we make this document more effective in the sense of ensuring its recommendations are applied in the context of living environment design in a way that makes a real difference to people? How do the delegates envision us working together to make that happen? Securing the support of this committee is straightforward enough, but what happens after that in so far as the delegates envisage rolling out the guidelines? It might not be a question of statutory obligations, but we should be aiming for a general understanding of best practice and how local authorities, State bodies and agencies will have as the centrepiece of the roll-out of any built living environment an accommodation of the needs of people with varying degrees of ability and disability.

I congratulate the delegates once again on the publication of this document.