Ms Samantha Kenny:

I will give a quick overview of how transport is important to us. We live 6 km from our local town on a busy main road in rural Ireland. We are not far from the county. We are in south Kildare. It is not like living in Mayo; it is what people would still class as civilisation. To leave the house, Ava has to get in her van. That is the only way she can leave the house. We cannot go out for a walk because the road is too busy. The nearest bus stop is about 700 m away but we cannot walk to it and, if we do, she cannot get on the bus because it is a minibus with steps. If we want to access public transport, we have to drive 6 km for accessible public transport. When we drive those 6 km, we have an unmanned railway station so we have to give notice to Iarnród Éireann to make sure we can get on a train. If we want to go with the intercity coach, we cannot get on it because it is by steps. Ava's wheelchair does not fold and she cannot walk. The local town link bus is the only accessible form of public transport in our area that is manned.

We literally cannot survive without our accessible vehicle. The reason we had to raise funds for it was that Ava had to change wheelchair and the wheelchair she changed to could not be folded and was too heavy to lift in and out of a car. They withheld the wheelchair from me until I got accessible transport because it was a health and safety risk that I could not get it in and out of the car. They could not give it to me because I would hurt myself. We had to raise funds because we could not get a loan. We tried to get loans in the past and could not. We did not even raise funds for a new van - we got a second-hand one.

The scheme in place for wheelchair-accessible vehicles is not accessible for the average family. The scheme, to my understanding, is designed so you can change your vehicle every few years and not have to worry about breakdowns and things. The only way to do that without paying a substantial amount of money to upgrade the vehicle is to buy new.

We were recently quoted for a new van. We are looking at €32,000 for the van and €20,000 for adaptation. That is €52,000 for a wheelchair-accessible van, with VRT and VAT removed. That is after they have taken the scheme. If we went down that route, we have been told that in two years' time we can trade it in and might only have to pay a few thousand euro to upgrade to a new one. That is the scheme we have. It is not accessible so people are buying second-hand vehicles that they are keeping on the road as long as they can, getting loans they have to pay back or depending on family again.

Wheelchair-accessible vehicles are not optional extras for many families like ours. We rely on them to get around in our day-to-day life. Our daughter cannot leave the house without one. Most are diesel or petrol models. There is no electric alternative. With the new measures in place, in ten years' time we will struggle to find a van because there is no provision for us in the new green measures. We are trying to stop diesels being produced. Currently there is one electric model being provided by a single dealer. I do not have the heart even to ask how much it will cost. I know I will never be able to afford it. We have the worry hanging over our head that in eight years' time we may not be able to buy a new van if there are no second-hand vans around because they are not being produced anymore. On top of that, we are being hit with a carbon tax measure when it hits diesel because we all drive diesel and petrol vans. That goes to the end user again and that is our only form of transport for all our families, which was not taken into account.

Public transport does not exist for us. The accessible vehicle scheme is not working and is dependent on the dealer. It is a retrospective grant as well, so a person must have the money to pay up front and then claim back the tax. There is a waiting time to get the money back again. It does not feel like a great deal of thought was put into the scheme. It feels like a box-ticking exercise so that people can say they thought about us because they put this scheme in place.