Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I live the reality of this and we need to create the type of service that exists in cities and urban areas whereby when someone needs the service, he or she can avail of it. For a bus service, everyone will have to go to the pub at 7 p.m. and leave at 11 p.m. because that is when the bus will run. What happens if a couple wants an early dinner sitting and to be home at 10 p.m. because they are paying for a babysitter and do not want to be hanging around all night but somebody else wants a late sitting in a restaurant at 8.30 p.m. or 9 p.m. and stay until midnight? In the city, what people do is that within a quarter of an hour of leaving they phone a taxi. We need this type of reality and on-call service. My point is that it would be up to the contracting authority to ensure that wheelchair-accessible vehicles would be in adequate supply to meet all reasonable needs. In the meantime, we must recognise the fact that if we are to allow existing hackneys and taxis into the game, it would be inhibiting to require 100% wheelchair accessibility in every vehicle in rural Ireland with only 10% wheelchair accessibility in urban Ireland. This is the point I am making. All I want to do is replicate-----