Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will speak first on amendments Nos. 203 and 206, and then I will move to amendment No. 205.

On amendment No. 203, the points have been made well by others with regard to disabled people and the planning system. I will give one example. In my constituency, new housing has been built in the past few years in Baldoyle. There is a train station right next to it in Clongriffin but the access for people from Baldoyle to the train station in Clongriffin is very poor. It consists of a lift that is often broken, and a temporary stairwell in terrible condition. There are huge problems with vandalism. A disabled person often simply cannot access the public transport that is right on his or her doorstep. This is completely and utterly unacceptable and a sign of how our planning system has failed disabled people in that area. Older people with reduced mobility are affected as well, and parents with children and buggies are excluded from public transport that is meant to be accessible to all of us.

These things are very real if you look at the gender considerations. When I talk to women in my local community, certainly when I talk to female public representatives, they will constantly bring up issues around how things are planned and designed and how they feel that affects them particularly from a gender dimension. Women are more affected when you have got public parks put in with new housing but there are no public toilets with them, for example. In one of the same areas that I am talking about within my constituency, Clongriffin, there is an excellent public park there, Father Collins Park. There are public toilets in it but they are locked for the entire year. That affects people's ability to use these amenities. It is great to have these facilities but when the local authority decides to lock them, it is a failure of the local authority but also a failure of the planning system. You plan out a park-----