Ms Joan Carthy:

I go back to the idea of having a doctor's letter. It is something that comes up for people with disabilities all the time. We need doctors' letters for everything that we need or want to get involved in.

It is €25 to get a doctor's letter with a medical card. That in itself puts a cost on whether a person can vote. That is a barrier for some people. Looking at access to polling stations, it is great to see that it is down to 26, which seems a more manageable number, but referring to something Mr. Ellis said about a ramp being brought out for a person, that is not good enough. Breaking down what accessibility really means, are they fully wheelchair accessible or are they accessible because a ramp has been put in place to allow somebody to get in? If we do not have that level playing field of full access for people with disabilities, they are not going to vote, even if they know that their own station is okay but other places may not be. We have to get everywhere accessible. A major awareness campaign needs to go along with that because people with disabilities have been excluded for so long now that they just pull themselves away from politics. Their view is “It is not about me, it is not for me, they do not even want me to vote”. They do not therefore engage in politics in any way. Not everybody, obviously, but that is what happens. We have to bring people with disabilities back into the fold and make them aware that they have every opportunity to vote in the same way as everybody else. There is a space for postal votes for those people but we need to find a better way of doing that. It is to ensure that people with disabilities come out of their homes, whether it is a Saturday or during the week. Many people with disabilities do not have personal assistants.