Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is not personal to any of the witnesses because, excuse the pun, with transport, we are all on a journey. However, there is a level of tolerance for ableism in Ireland that is shocking. I do not accept the phrases "We'll try", "We'll endeavour" or "We're on the way". You will do it. The new Taoiseach has said we will sign all the optional protocols to the UN convention and that the relevant organisations must comply with them. Commercial transport operators are being given licences and, as my colleague pointed out, young women are told they cannot travel. That puts the young woman to whom I referred at risk. It is not good enough.

I know the NTA has got a volume of correspondence on the new BusConnects bus stop designs. We have been using the public transport system for 20 years. I have a son who is a wheelchair user. He is partially sighted. The nearest bus stop to us, on the Rock Road junction with Trimleston Avenue, is unusable. The NTA has been written to about that. It is suicidal. The way it is laid out you cannot see the road from the bus shelter. You have to cross two bicycle lanes and stand on a narrow concrete strip on the edge of the Rock Road, which is like something out of "Mad Max". It is an extremely dangerous situation. The design is not for purpose. My son is 22 and will not use that bus stop. He has to go down the other side of the Rock Road to the punchbowl cross at the pedestrian lights and use a different bus shelter.

I know the NTA ticks all sorts of boxes by having disability advisory groups and feedback but, de facto, the train and DART system is inaccessible and dangerous. My son cannot use it. Either the lift is broken or there is nobody in the station. Then there is this business of ringing Connolly. I rang Pearse before I came in here. My experience is you have to ring Pearse to arrange to have somebody physically there at the station with a ramp. It is unacceptable we have to ring 24 hours in advance. That means my son cannot have an impulse. He cannot decide, "Oh, it's sunny. I think I'll go to Howth." Can witnesses imagine if we told members of the LGBTQI who wanted to go to Electric Picnic that, because they are members of that community, they had to ring 24 hours in advance and tell us their travel plans, or if we said that to Muslims or black people? It is completely unacceptable.

I will give Mr. Kenny a chance at the end.

He made the comment that sometimes disabled people just turn up looking for a train or bus. That is what all of us do. We just turn up. That is the nature of public transport. Again, it is about a mindset. The gap is not on the platform. The gap is not between the ramp and the door. The gap is in understanding that the right of disabled people to access public transport is a fundamental human right. It is about freedom of movement and people should not be restricted in that way.

With regard to the lifts, I recently went to Germany to do a piece for The Irish Timeson Berchtesgaden, Hitler's Eagle's Nest retreat. The lift for that works. It was built in 1942 or something. I do not understand why the lifts in Booterstown or Clontarf do not. Mr. Bernard Mulvany runs the social media site where every day he lists the stations that are out of order, which are not necessarily displayed correctly in real time on the platforms so people do not know. I cannot say that to my 22-year-old son. On the few occasions he has used the DART to go to Clontarf to the Central Remedial Clinic, CRC, he has often come back to find that the lift is broken in Booterstown DART station and then he has to go to Blackrock to wait for the next DART. People have to ask the person who is there with the ramp to wait for the next DART. I would say without exception that all of Mr. Kenny's staff are lovely.

In terms of qualitative research, participant observation is recognised internationally as a valid mode of collecting data. My son is forced to use the bus network mostly. We discuss all the negative experiences he has in depth in our house because each one of them is a risk incident. For what it is worth, the unpleasant experiences he has are never from female drivers. I ask him who said X, Y or Z to him. It is wonderful because his personal assistant is from central Europe and she is a woman, and he has a dog. It is almost like a social experiment because you get a combination of sexism, misogyny, racism and all those ingredients mixed up in the negative responses. I ask what the driver looked like or where he was from. It seems to be an almost exclusively male phenomenon. I am from Finglas. My son said to me, "They sounded like you, Dad". Therefore, if Irish Rail wants to focus on a cohort of people who need extra training, I might suggest that might hint at who the primary cause of these negative offences is.

I am delighted to hear that Irish Rail is getting this new fleet of train carriages. Is each one of those wheelchair accessible? Do they have those ramps that come out?