Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State, Ms Smith and Mr. O'Shea are very welcome to the committee. We have spoken about transport issues quite often. They come across our desks, as do the barriers that are put in front of people. They have no access to transport, or no adequate transport. Perhaps I differ from some members here. I was not so optimistic last week when we met the NTA. I had a lot of questions about many issues that were not really answered. The Minister of State cannot answer them either because she is the Minister of State with responsibility for disability services within a certain Department.

My question to her goes to the vein of what this committee is about, that is, the implementation of the UNCRPD. She sits in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the lead Department for the UNCRPD. I will not ask her the week before the budget to rate the co-operation between the various Departments but it would be really interesting to see if she were able to put a score on that, as Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities, or to pitch Departments against one another. It is a decade since the Department of Finance ceased the disabled drivers scheme - a decade of disabled people and families not being able to access cars. We see the Departments of Health and Transport being absolutely ableist in so many ways. There are laws to ensure that contractors must keep roads accessible, and they do not implement them. The NTA, under the Department of Transport, has the authority to make private operators, under their licensing, have disabled access, and it has not implemented that once. It is only thinking about it. Yet all these issues come to the Minister of State's door.

To go a few steps back on that, has the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform been part of the discussion about providing those transport supports? It is all down to money and putting in the actions. When the Minister of State's Department talks to the NTA, does the latter come back with the same answers it came back to us with? It says it is adequate and within the limit, but it actually does not work for people with disabilities. Exactly as Mr. O'Shea said earlier, we may have access to here but there is no way we can get to there. We have inaccessible roads and footpaths, and people are just barred into their homes.

I could go on. I wish the Minister of State the very best of luck with her budget negotiations. We are all here rooting for her because we really need a disability budget. The sad thing is that the Department does not have control of all the stuff that affects our family and friends with disabilities.