Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My question is for Dublin Bus. I was at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Autism addressed by representatives of Autism Assistance Dogs Ireland. Ms Debbie Carr spoke about the assistance dog, Gandhi, that her 21-year-old son Aidan uses.

She brought up the issue and said that Aidan had been refused access onto a bus twice in the last month. She also spoke about how this could have been far worse were it not for the relationship with the dog and the advantages the dog provides in respect of self-regulation and so forth. There would be no question of this happening if one was dealing with someone who had vision difficulties. This is something that needs to be addressed in order that it does not happen again because we are dealing with a considerable number of autistic people and life is difficult enough. We need to be able to offer them their full rights as citizens and I believe there has been a serious mistake here. I am not blaming the witnesses but it is something that needs to addressed in a holistic way in order that we do not see more incidents like this.