Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and very much welcome her opening statement. I was glad she said she agrees with the transport working group's report and the acknowledgment of inequality of access to transport to disability services, particularly day services. The report states, "Access to such transport should be standardised, but ... such provision does not necessarily fall within the responsibilities of the Department of Health". The Minister of State herself said that it is within the different Departments. This is a huge issue. When you try to get one lead Department but it falls under all different Departments, no one seems to take full responsibility for it. That is when there seems to be a massive issue because one Department will say it is not in that Department and not in this Department or not in their Department and then you are going back around. There is no accountability. I know how committed the Minister of State is to trying to solve this. The first thing I ask her to do is work on this and just provide one lead role in a Department that we can work from. That is the first thing.

I also want to bring up my own area in Carlow. In my local area there are a lot of people who live quite rurally. The service does not have Garda-vetted and trained drivers. Garda vetting is a huge issue. There are also issues with-----