Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to echo all the comments mentioned so far this morning and welcome Mr. Tyndall and Ms Cooney for coming and presenting us with the Grounded - Unequal access for people with Disabilities to Personal Transport Schemes report. I am impressed that they managed to produce another necessary and important report before Mr. Tyndall's retirement. I wish him best wishes in his retirement. Access to transport is an issue I have been raising since elected and one the committee has been exploring since it was formed. For my constituency of County Clare which is very rural and public transport is patchy at best but even less practical for wheelchair users. It is interesting to hear that the Ombudsman has not had many complaints on access from rural areas. One Clare man in particular, Pádraic Hayes, has done Trojan work to highlight the lack of access to transport. He explains that for many transport is the key factor in accessing work, shopping for essentials and any kind of social and cultural life. It is the keystone for all these aspects of life. Without it a person is denied the right to participate. Without transport in County Clare, at the very least, there is a negative knock-on effect. Local Link, a regional route bus service in the county, only operates between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. which means it cannot assist anybody who is in full-time employment for a regular 9 to 5. That is just one example, there is a massive gap. Public transport is one thing, as the report shows, and having private means of transport is another.

The mobility allowance and the motorised transport grant were slashed in that cost-cutting austerity bust phase of governance. It has further disabled people with disabilities by removing the pathways to participating fully and meaningfully in society with still no alternatives. As Mr. Tyndall has reminded us, as Ombudsman, he has been flagging these issues since 2012. His concerns seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

My first question is: what response did he get from the Department when he, for example, recommended a review six months after that discontinuance, or when he raised his concerns with them? He has already mentioned the justifications, whereby they refer to lack of resources and the plan being withdrawn at the last minute. As he said, the cost for community and rights is so acute.

Second, it has been suggested that the previous schemes had their own disadvantages, including that they potentially breached the Equal Status Acts. What should we as a committee be advocating for moving forward? What does Mr. Tyndall see as the most effective and inclusive model for a private transport scheme, knowing, as he does, the inner workings of the previous ones? I would love to hear his thoughts. I would love to hear his opinions on how to move away from a medical model assessment based on impairment towards a human rights or social model-aligned assessment.