Mr. Dylan Nelson:

On housing, there are 150 new apartments and compact houses on the Drimnagh Road in the constituency in which I live. I drove past each of those properties and they all have a step at the front door. These are brand new homes and there is a step at the front door. It is 2023. There should be no steps. They should be accessible. I am living in a bedroom that was built for me when I was eight years old. I am nearly 30. My mother put in for changes to be made by my local council in order to have my room extended to give me more space because I have not stayed the same height and width that I was when I was eight. The council rejected this and said there was no need.

My room has not been updated to suit my needs in 21 years. My mother has done 90% of the work herself, between saving up and selling her car at one point to do major works that had to be carried out because the council did not insulate the bedroom properly when it was first built. There is nothing for people with disabilities. The floor in my bathroom is starting to lift because it was not laid properly. The council came out and the only thing it could say was that it is terrible. I do not need pity. I need someone to actually take action. My mother does not need anyone's pity. She needs someone to actually do something. Then the council said there was an issue with the planning permission for my bedroom.

Unfortunately, the guy who built it passed away after doing so. I remember him well. He never got the right paperwork in. The council wanted to knock down the extension but my mother raised the case and all of a sudden it just forget about it.

New-build homes not having what are commonly known as wet rooms is a basic thing. It is a lot easier to put a wet room into an apartment when it is being built than for a council to rip out all its plumbing after it decides it is the one it is going to offer you. For two years, I have been on the priority list as a medical priority due to my not having the right facilities in my current property. Two years is a long time when you are classed as a priority. I went from ninth on the list to tenth. Therefore, I am going the wrong way on the list. When I should be going down, I am going up. Where is the prioritisation in that? I do not know.

On buses, I constantly take verbal abuse from bus drivers on my way to work. I have left out the bad language. I work in a Department and am not working from home. I have to be in the office. People depend on my being there. The section I work in deals with the public. I cannot say to someone that I cannot help on a given day because I am not in the office. I have to be there; I have no choice.

On top of that, if my wheelchair breaks, I could have to wait ten weeks for new parts. When you ring the HSE, the earliest response is that it will send out a different chair as soon as possible but might not have one to suit your needs. I came up with a suggestion for the HSE, namely, that we be given backup wheelchairs we can keep at home that would get us to work in the event of an emergency. They do not have to be spectacular or have all the things the chair I am in has but it just has to do the job in the short term. The HSE said no, its attitude being that it did not ask me to get a job. That is what I was told by my occupational therapist that I was never asked to get a job. On the one hand, the State is saying you should go to the Civil Service if you are disabled and that it will accommodate your needs, whereas, on the other hand, you are being told that, because you got a job, it is your problem.

I actually researched this matter. I said to the HSE that a bike would go onto the front of my manual chair and give me the option to get to work in an emergency. It was only €5,000 because the HSE gets 20% off. I was not looking for another €15,000 wheelchair; I was just looking for a quick and easy option so that if in the morning my power chair did not start, I could jump into my backup option and go. However, this was rejected on the basis that it was my problem because I got a job. That, to me, is just not acceptable.

On getting repairs, even to my power chair, I cannot ring the HSE and say I need my chair fixed at work. I have to ring Mr. Delaney and arrange for the engineer to come to my office. If I ring and ask the engineer to come to the office, I will be told I have to do it from home. Before I got Mr. Delaney involved in this issue, I had to take two days off work just to get my chair serviced, not even repaired. That is the great service that the company employed by the HSE provides. Yes, it is cheap, but it is cheap for a reason, and it is not because it is good.