Mr. Peter Gohery:

I would give the Government an F grade for "fail" in transport. On the train service, for example, any wheelchair user has to give 24 hours before travelling by rail to a town to ensure there are staff there. In County Carlow, there are stations that are unmanned which means wheelchair users cannot disembark from trains in them.

Another issue is walking paths. When county councils repair footpaths, I can trip on them if the repairs are not done properly. An elevation of a quarter of an inch - between 3 mm and 6 mm - will trip me up. I do not have the luxury of knowing exactly. I am sure it is worse for the visually impaired. Footpaths are not being done right and are being left in an awful state. Dr. Sinnott will speak about that.

The other issue is greenways, which are a contentious issue in County Galway. I have been working on this since 2014. I know a lot about them and what is going on. The sad part of this is that I was never consulted as part of a DPO or as a disabled person or asked what we wanted. E-scooters and e-bikes, which we mentioned, will not be banned on greenways. They have the potential to do anything up to 60 km/h. Where greenways are being planned - forced in I should say - in County Galway is away out in the back of beyond. There are access issues if someone has an accident on one. I was told before that was not the case. I was talking to a friend I know who was travelling on the Waterford greenway. She fell off her bike and broke her wrist. She had her son with her. It took her five hours to get off the greenway. She had to limp all the way back to Waterford hospital because the services did not know where she was. We are told that does not happen. That is crap; it does happen. We wanted the greenways to go along the side of the road so that if there was an issue, or if a person got tired or was not able to keep walking or push a wheelchair, a car could be brought up close by or the person could be pushed to a nearby exit to get off the greenway. There are certain areas in rural Ireland where these greenways are going to be white elephants. They will never be used. They will only be for the few, which is wrong, not the majority. In and around towns, they will be highly used and populated but in rural Ireland, they are not going to be seen.