Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, the key is to get the decision support service in place. That is the blockage at the moment. Members will have seen that the budget provided a substantial additional funding in that regard. An extra €2 million was provided for next year, bringing the total funding to €5.8 million. The key thing we need to do is to provide for an ICT service because it will be quite ICT-intensive to link the various individuals who are looking to avail of this service. The commitment is that by mid-2022 we will have the decision support service fully operational. It was identified that one or two of the measures in the 2015 Act need to be streamlined somewhat and, as such, we will be seeking to bring forward legislation to address that. The prime element is to get the decision support service up and running. Significant additional funding is in place to so do.

As regards transport, there is a fund in place to assist with the lifts at stations around the country. I am very aware of this issue. I rely on public transport much of the time. One often sees a message that the station lift is out of order. It is no good to people who are in a wheelchair or have some sort of physical disability to get the message at that stage. These issues arise frequently and they need to be addressed.