Mr. Ciar?n Delaney:

Between 2040 and 2060 is when it is expected that we will have fully accessible wheelchair taxis in this State. They were told that it was a resource issue. It is not a resource issue because they contacted the company in the UK about the matter. Believe it or not, that company is reducing the number of staff. It is a situation of pure laziness again. When the taxi industry was privatised back in the day when there were 206 taxis in Cork, overnight you were going along. It is simple. If there is a line in the sand, you do it.

On what Mr. Nelson said, it just dawned on me that the legislation he highlighted refers to the public transport regulations from 2019. That is when the last update happened. It could have been done for wheelchairs. On the wheelchair spaces, the bus drivers cannot do anything about it because they do not have the support. Believe it or not, two drivers in Athlone's Bus Éireann depot were disciplined, subject to a disciplinary pre-hearing, because they refused to take out a bus that was inaccessible when they knew that there was going to be a wheelchair passenger on the route. There was a bus parked there. It is one of the new ones. Dermot O'Leary from the National Bus and Rail Union, NBRU, can supply the committee with the details and the NBRU has an accessibility committee which I am a member of so it might be of interest to the committee to bring it in as well. No word of a lie, those drivers got disciplined because they wanted to bring out the wheelchair accessible bus for a passenger who has been travelling on the service for the past nine years in order that the person could get into work.