Mr. Peter Kearns:

I thank the Deputy, who made some very good points. I come from Dromahair in Leitrim and access by bus is not available. I am not able to go to Carrick-on-Shannon, Sligo or Manorhamilton. Disabled people do not have a choice in terms of accessing local public transport. If there was a consultation dialogue platform to listen to disabled people, I am sure people would take on board our concerns and issues.

Deputy Ellis spoke earlier about cars. I would love to have a new car and just press a start button but the cost is prohibitive. Most disabled people are working class or from a background of poverty and the cost of a new car, even with support for vehicle registration tax, VRT, and so on, is beyond them. In the last ten years, apart from the barrier of the plastic straw, there is also the barrier of my car. I used to turn the car key on the outside but in the past few years, because automatic cars cannot be left running, I have to get into my car, put my left foot on the brake and hang out of the car with the door wide open to turn the key. These are two new barriers that I did not face ten years ago. They are both the result of climate action and climate change policies.

A lot of my colleagues in Leitrim and Sligo told me to make sure to point out that when getting out of one's car into the traffic, as a wheelchair user, one has to have the door wide open. I have to have the door wide open just to turn on the engine. A lot of disabled parking spaces now are such that we are getting out into the traffic. In Sligo we had a student carpark that was a safe place for disabled people to park their cars. There were six spaces and we could get out safely but that carpark has gone since January. It has been turned into a green area. Those six safe parking spaces in Sligo are gone. My colleagues were very keen to tell me to make sure I identified that problem here today.

Unfortunately, because the Sligo DPO was set up only recently, up to two years ago there was no platform for us to identify that at the time. Sligo DPO is up and running since last year. Now we are trying to identify the platforms for engaging with the disabled persons' networks and the county council. It is about getting them to recognise they need to talk and recognise the idea that dialogue itself is a process also. I know I sound like a broken record but what we would like from today is that the DPOs, and the resources for the DPOs, are identified to choose the genuine pathways of engagement with people who are disabled when it comes to looking at climate change.