Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I thank the Deputy. There was a lot in that. I have always said that it is the proud boast of the Office of the Ombudsman that no recommendation has not been accepted. There are many ombudsman offices in countries that are less democratic, or that are newer to democracy than Ireland is, which struggle to get recommendations accepted. Generally, once the recommendations are accepted, they are implemented. However, this recommendation is a glaring example of a set of recommendations that were accepted but then were not implemented. I never got a refusal to engage. The Department was always able to give me an update on progress. Somebody in a newspaper article quoted me as saying, and I was in turn quoting a member of staff about something else, that it was the slowest slow bicycle race on record. It is not usually the case that people say, "No, we are not going to do that". However, it did reach a point where proposals, which had taken a very long time to draw up, were finally about to be brought forward to Cabinet and the plug was pulled because of resource issues. That was the turning point in all of this. Now we hear that the issue is being moved forward to a much broader process of developing proposals across the spectrum for disabled people. That is not enough. There needs to be more definitive proposals.

The deficiency in the previous schemes that was identified was principally the lack of access for older people. From an equality perspective, as I said in answer to an earlier question, there should not be, and cannot be, an upper age limit on the scheme. If people need to have transport to access the communities, that need will be there regardless of their age. That is an important point. We are always going to have to have some set of criteria as to who should access the scheme. However, it should be about people needing it because their mobility is in some way affected. It could equally be that they might not have a physical disability that affects movement, but, for instance, that they might have a severe condition that affects their stamina, their ability to walk or they may have a degenerative illness. That is a set of reasons people's mobility might be impaired. The issue is that this scheme has to be for people who cannot otherwise get around. The measure has to be their mobility. I think the Deputy can envisage quite a number of models. The tax breaks, for instance, within the current scheme are quite comprehensive. That is not a bad model. It is just the access issues that are the problem. Then you-----