Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their opening statements. We are all aware we are in the middle of a climate emergency and that significant action has to be taken to reduce our emissions and reach our national targets. Many of the things that are done may be well intentioned but they are obviously sometimes not cognisant of a significant proportion of our population who identify as disabled. For instance, I hear regularly from people about different decisions that are taken that impact on their lives, such as cycle lanes. We see in urban centres that the number of cycle lanes has increased and people are being encouraged to cycle or use scooters, but people who have a visual impairment or a hearing impairment find these very dangerous. They cannot either see, or maybe hear, them coming and the people are not always nice about it when an impact almost occurs.

We are encouraged to use public transport where that is possible, but for many disabled people, that is not possible. Buses can only facilitate maybe one wheelchair user at a time. The gap between the platform and the train still exists in many cases or the lift is not working at the train station and disabled people cannot access the platform in the first place.

Mr. Kearns gave the example of doing away with plastic straws. I accept that is well intentioned and required, but there is no viable alternative put in place. I myself know. I do not use a straw regularly but if I take my children to McDonalds and we have straws in our drinks, they are gone to mush by the time we get to the end of our drinks. What is there at the moment is not working. It is quite concerning they are not even biodegradable. I thought they were but they are not. There are quite a few issues there, and they are only a small handful.

We have to look also at how disabled people are affected by high costs. They are more likely to be affected by poverty. We see the introduction of carbon taxes and how that affects. People are encouraged to retrofit their houses but that is very expensive to do, and unless they have money upfront whereby they can avail of the matching grant, they are dependant on the warmer homes scheme for which there is a waiting list of two and half to three years. There are a lot of things that make sense and should happen but they are impacting disabled people when they should not be and these people's views are not being taken into account.

Dr. Mooney listed a number of organisations the Department has consulted, but the majority of those are not DPOs. Does Dr. Mooney engage with DPOs regularly? Article 4.3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, stipulates that organisations, Departments etc. must engage with DPOs, which are disabled people representing themselves. Are the needs of disabled people taken into consideration when developing policy?

Has the Independent Living Movement Ireland, ILMI, been consulted on different issues or is it aware of other DPOs that are? Is it meaningful consultation in that it is not just a box-ticking exercise? I have spoken to people on different committees such as strategic policy committees of local authorities who have given their views on the parking bays or outdoor dining areas that were introduced during Covid, which seemed like a great idea for some but affected disabled people by ending up moving parking bays without any consultation to places that were not suitable at all. Are the recommendations actually taken on board? There needs to be meaningful consultation where we are listening to people and taking their points of view into account because Covid, the Ukrainian war and wars in other places impact on disabled people much more than able-bodied people and we need to ensure we are prepared on how to respond to emergencies going forward.