Mr. Aaron Mullaniff:

NCBI has prioritised the need to create a safe space for travel by train. The reality is that sometimes when you go into the outside environment and the LUAS doors are closing and you are working your long cane for the first time and people are gathering in and around you, to my earlier point, some people do not recognise that it is a long cane or what it represents or the status it gives. Sometimes it is a matter of confidence. You are constantly trying to build that confidence. We have been working with the National Transport Authority to secure on all forms of public transport, particularly rail, the creation of a safe space for travel. It would be open to everybody to use and would not be exclusive to blind or vision-impaired people or persons with disabilities. Society has a huge role to play. Creating more awareness of the access needs of people is really important, but equally important is looking at how we have moved away from a charity model to a different model that focuses on how societies and attitudes in society can often disable or how poor design can disable. We are therefore encouraging planners, architects and engineers to come in and work with us and with blind and vision-impaired people and persons with disabilities, who know best and who have the lived experience. Costly retrofitting should be avoided. The plan in the long term is that that new infrastructure and fleet would be disability-proofed. It is a very innovative initiative. It has not really been done or looked at before. We look forward to getting the doors of that open. It goes back to the importance of mobility.