Mr. Myles O'Reilly:

Deputy Ó Cuív has outlined an approach to solving the problem. He is quite right that most of the existing vehicles are not wheelchair-accessible and on the basis of his approach we would start off by using existing vehicles and I see nothing wrong with that. What we have proposed is an additional service to the Local Link service that would be very much based in the village. It would be adaptable and the drivers would have every incentive to work whatever hours it took to get people in and out of the village. Rather than somebody in Dublin figuring out schedules or routes, this would be done by local drivers, perhaps in consultation with the publicans or others to come up with a plan to serve the local area.

If Deputy Ó Cuív had had an opportunity to read our proposal, he would have seen it is not exclusively based on helping out older people. It would certainly service people who want to go to a restaurant or a pub. We see Local Link as connecting to the service in the village, picking people up from the one village to go to other villages or for hospital appointments. The service we propose would simply operate to and from the surrounding area in and out of the village.

In so far as new vehicles would be involved, under the NTA's existing rules they would have to be wheelchair-accessible. There is an issue about wheelchair-accessible vehicles. We have asked for a full review of the requirement with a study by the ESRI. There is an argument to suggest that there should be specialised wheelchair-accessible services rather than requiring all vehicles to be wheelchair-accessible. As of now, the rules are that all new public transport vehicles must be wheelchair accessible, which is why it is in our proposal.