Ms Carol Coad:

That is a big focus of our current ORIS applications, which we are we waiting for decisions on, and also of our outdoor recreation plan for the next couple of years. We have some great providers in County Wicklow who are very open to working with us. If we can provide equipment, they will provide instructors and get it going.

One particular project I have just had funded is a Seatrac system for Wicklow Harbour, which is right in the middle of the town. It is a complete hot spot for all the kids, and lots of grown-ups swim there a lot. There is a lovely sauna on the side. It just has a real community vibe. There is an old slip and a pebble beach. We saw a system - we took a trip I need to talk about as well - that was self-propelled. It is like a Stannah chairlift to get you down into the water. A disabled person will come across in his or her wheelchair, or an elderly person who cannot cope with the uneven ground of a pebble beach, sit into a chair with a remote control, which then lowers that person down into the water. He or she can swim, get back onto the chair and come back out again. It needs a steady platform to work on, hence the old slip and why we applied for it for Wicklow. Again, we put that through ORIS. It is coming as a pilot. We will run it for a while at Wicklow Harbour and will then try to replicate it in other areas along the coast.

The second big project we have had funded this year, which I was delighted to get across the line, was a feasibility study and project development measure. The focus of that is to identify six areas in the county for access for people with a physical disability to outdoor recreation: two to the water; two on bikes; and two to the upland areas, which will probably involve a modified wheelchair. The bikes are where the links with the LSP really make life easy and help us to get a lot done. We have identified a specific type of mountain bike, which is an off-road mountain bike. We have funding for two in Ballinastoe, which is a Coillte mountain bike facility that is free of charge to use. There is a commercial operator there, Biking.ie, run by Niall Davis. He has been working with us on his being able to house those there and managing their roll-out. We use the LSP to fund that. We would like to replicate that in a couple of other areas in the county.

The whole area of facilitating disabled people is huge for us. It is often not that big a deal. It is about those three steps. It is not a whole new programme and a whole new room. We just need to figure out how to get through those three steps. Ms Aisling Hubbard, who manages the LSP, and I got some funding last year through a sports inclusion programme. We went on a bit of a fact-finding mission. We had funding to do an EU trip to look at disabled access to outdoor recreation. We went to Hossegor in France, where the World Para Surfing Championships were held. There were double amputees surfing big waves and people with no limbs bodysurfing. We went over there thinking the organisers were going to have this amazing infrastructure, we would copy and it would be great, but they did not. They just had more helpers, they had the right wheelchair to get people into the water and they had six people helping. It really opened our eyes to see that this was not actually hard. We just need to have the right people trained in the right way, and the right small pieces of infrastructure, to open this world for everybody else.