Mr. Ger Deering:

To be fair regarding Wasted Lives, there are particular circumstances that delayed that project, though we have some views on how it could be speeded up. We have been talking to the HSE in recent weeks and we are going to engage pretty strongly with it. It had specific issues that were causing it difficulty. I will be engaging with the executive and would welcome an opportunity to come back to the committee after that to talk about how we might jointly approach this. If we could get the HSE - and I believe we can - to apply the same rigour to Wasted Lives and approach it in the same way it has In Sickness and in Debt, I believe we can make more progress there. Where this committee could help us a lot is to try to talk to the people who were responsible, if it can identify them, for access to transport for people with disabilities. That is the one that is not progressing and it is a concern. Our office has been pushing this for 13 years now. Unfortunately, there is a theme across some of the things where we are finding problems that those who are perhaps more disadvantaged in society do not seem to receive the same attention as others, and that is a concern I have. If the committee were to look in more detail at that area, it could have an influence for sure.