Mr. John Dolan:

I have a couple of very quick comments. When Deputy Higgins spoke about the compliment to DFI in regard to working at an international level, we work at a local level and we are trying to do more and more work with local authorities and so on. There is the national piece and the international piece. There are three legs of the stool. Looking at what happened in Ukraine, that has had repercussions for disabled people as do difficult things that happen internationally or in countries that move away from democracy. It is important to say we are talking about a nasty little issue we still have here in Ireland but at the same time I can be very proud that Ireland has continued to be a democracy, and a pretty well-functioning one.

There are things I would say, and we all would say, that could be done better, and should have been done better for the past 100 years. That kind of frustrates me. Why in the name of God we cannot actually solve this? We can. Things come on the radar and then they slip off, then there is a change of government and then there is this and that. That is what is going on. To make that point, in the 1980s a woman named Nora Draper, who lived in Dublin, became disabled in late or middle age and was appalled and affronted by the idea that she could not vote. She and some other people got involved and the scheme they came up with at the time was that a garda and a presiding officer would turn up in a person's house with a box and the person would have to show them evidence from a doctor that he or she was competent - not that they had a condition - to vote. We still have not gone the whole way with that.

That is a bit of a rant but it is about how slow it is and how it drags. I will repeat the point I made earlier that I am appealing to this committee to use a stick. This has to do with local authorities, a range of Departments and public bodies, the Office of Public Works, and so on.

It is great to have an Electoral Commission and to hear the head of that speak about universal access but it is riddled with obstacles. That is what the Deputy heard half an hour ago. This is just about capital money and putting a system in place. It is not a cost. The Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform does not need to be bothered about it breaking the bank. Those are my couple of comments.