Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions

Mobility Allowance and Motorised Transport Grant Scheme: Department of Health

4:00 pm

Mr. Jim Breslin:

There was a particular problem with the Equal Status Acts because the scheme was not on a legislative basis; it was an administrative scheme.

If we provide legislation then it would stand on its own legislative basis but, importantly, that legislation has to have an objective basis to it. If it was purely arbitrary again, it might not be an issue for the Equal Status Act but there might be constitutional or other reasons. We do have the option of providing for a category of persons to avail of this scheme and for others not to avail of it but it would have to be based on objective grounds. Some of the work that we have been doing is trying to tease through what could be the objective grounds for that. Our thinking at the moment is that it would be invidious to distinguish between different disabilities that are in or out. Such an approach would lack objectivity. It would certainly bring one back into that space of equality.

In terms of providing objective grounds that are legally sound, one of the areas we are looking at is functional impairment or functional requirements. That is where a lot of work has taken place. To give an example, which I provided in the statement, if a person is using a very large wheelchair, he or she is unlikely to be able to use public transport which most of us are able to use. He or she is unlikely even to be able to use public transport that somebody in an ordinary wheelchair would be able to use, certainly someone in an ordinary wheelchair who has an ability to manoeuvre himself or herself. Even with a personal assistant, carer or family friend accompanying them, such a person would probably not be able to use public transport or local transport solutions in those situations. Because of their functional requirement in that situation, they face a barrier that other people do not face and so what we must try to come up with examples or criteria such as that, that can be objectively stood up and that can be stood over when the Bill comes before the Oireachtas. That is the work we are trying to achieve.

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