Mr. Desmond Kenny:

We are a light-touch society when it comes to regulations and sanctions. Dr. Craddock mentioned the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, in America. It has sanctions such that if one does not do as obliged under the Act, one can end up in court. The committee should seek to have introduced the protocol to the UNCRPD that was not included in Ireland's ratification of it. If that protocol were in place, we would be talking about actions that people can take as individuals for infringement of their rights rather than having to go and have them mitigated through charities or your good selves on the committee or the NDA. We have to work on the basis that what has come forward through the UNCRPD are individual rights that have to be delivered to each individual, and each individual has a right of recourse including having sanctions imposed on those who do not adhere to their obligations. It should not be a light touch or do it when you get around to it approach. It should be done because that is what you have to do and if you do not, there will be sanctions.

It is very difficult to engage with the cyclist lobby because the cyclist, at present, is an enthusiast. They are like ourselves. Cyclists are advocates of something that has been denied to them. They are a lost population of people who felt victimised by motorists or whoever else in the past. The freedom they are now trying to win for the bicycle as a means of transport is all-important to them. Nobody wants to listen to the difficulties. The NDA can talk to the NTA about a cycling code and point out that shared space is difficult, but planners in the various local authorities will then decide that they cannot stop cyclists at bus stops because that would be too dangerous, so they will let the cyclists go through the bus stop, as it were. Those getting off the bus then have to rely on the goodwill and learning of individual cyclists. Let us not forget that this is a new discipline for people, particularly young people, in terms of knowing when to give way to a pedestrian. The Minister is in no way interested in sanctions for cyclists. He will not penalise them in any way, no matter what representations are made to him on those who are invading pedestrianised spaces. Whatever about moving cars off the streets, moving pedestrians off the streets is a totally different matter. Many people turn a blind eye to it and do not consider it to be something that should be sanctioned. It can be sanctioned. If one does it in other countries, one's bicycle will be confiscated and one will have to go to a police station to reclaim it. That is how they identify those cycling in areas reserved for pedestrians. We may have to do something like that in this country.

May I make a final comment regarding the employment of disabled people? The NDA gave a good example of practice in the context of the number of people with disabilities who are employed. There are 40,000 people employed in the sector looking after disabled people. As all of those organisations see each of their coterie of clients as specific to themselves, their employment ratio of disabled people is phenomenally low. In the context of their employment of disabled people, a 6% quota should be imposed on organisations that are receiving statutory funding.

Such organisations should look beyond their disability coterie, where somebody working in the area of residential intellectual disability would employ somebody with autism or whatever to carry out the jobs that can be done by other disabled people. Somebody with an intellectual disability can do less arduous jobs in an organisation such as the Irish Wheelchair Association. We have got to open that up as an employment opportunity for disabled people. We cannot look to others all the time to do things for us. We have the answer to many of the questions ourselves.