Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I imagine 400 to 500 taxis, or fewer, are wheelchair accessible. It is nearly impossible for someone in a wheelchair to get a wheelchair accessible taxi in this city. The figures are not important. The Government should have lived up to its commitment. All taxis should be wheelchair accessible. As a person with a young family, they are the only taxis I can access easily. I can get my children, pram or buggy in and out easily. I am slightly disabled in this regard and wish to have this happen. It will lead to a better taxi service and be a type of controlled point of entry. There is no cost to the State in this. It is not a budgetary difficulty. It is a commitment from the Government but it means nothing.

We are discussing a Bill with grand provisions for plans from the Department of Transport about accessibility. The former Minister of State, before his unscheduled departure from the Ministry, consulted the taxi industry to examine whether one in five taxis could be accessible. Does that fit in with this Bill? Does that contend with the plan outlined in Part 4 and proposed by the Department of Transport? I think not. The Department is in disarray and it is impossible to know what is happening there now.

There is a lack of real commitment. It is a statement in legislation of fine plans that can be removed by the Minister at the stroke of a pen for any reason. For all this fine legislation and all its fine clauses, the reality is that the Department of Transport has no interest. No progress is being made on the taxi issue. It is 2005 and there is not a peep out of the new Minister on this. It is not of interest. It is not a big, sexy €500 million project which is getting his attention. If there is not a lot of money involved — it means only a small legislative change and is an easy regulation to make — it is not done. That is the second fundamental flaw in this legislation, it does not set out the rights, the services and the guarantee of those services on a continual, long-term basis.

While Part 5 in regard to public service is very welcome, as is the 3% commitment in respect of access to employment, the reality is that the legislation is couched in language whereby it is not a definite commitment. There are all sorts of opt-out clauses throughout the legislation. What will the Government do about this? It is interesting to read the various speeches in terms of recommendations. The recommendations of my colleague, Deputy Boyle, and others are that we need to go back to the starting blocks. Some of the flaws in this legislative approach are so significant that no amendment on Committee or Report Stage would address them. The Government is good at getting itself into legislative messes.

It is up to the Government to decide on this. It can ignore what just about everyone in the disability movement and those on this side of the House have said about this legislation. It can wait to see what turns up in the courts in three or four years' time, which will be after the next election and it will have moved on to something else. I hope the Government will at least have the respect for the Legislature and the Judiciary as well as for its own role as the Executive to listen to what people in the disability movement have said, to the legal advice which has been aired publicly and to what Members of the House have said. If it does not discard the legislation completely and start again, which I contend it should do, it should at least see if it can make some significant, radical amendments.

I have seen many Bills in this House where a practically new Bill has arrived on Report Stage. Recently, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform effectively introduced a completely new surveillance Bill which was slipped into another Bill as a Report Stage amendment. It was the most remarkable and scandalous treatment of the Legislature. If the Minister can effectively slip in a surveillance Bill into separate legislation at the last minute, there is no reason the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform should not listen to what has been said on Second Stage and to what people outside the House have said. It should amend the legislation so that people have an unqualified right for an independent assessment of need, a legal entitlement to those services identified by that assessment, that they have a legal right to a legal decision on whether they are being treated properly; that we have fixed targets and enforcement mechanisms rather than just vague commitments without any real lock-in in the long term so that we must go to the Minister for Finance each year cap in hand, and that we widen the definition of "disabled" to include those with mental health difficulties.

They are just some of the amendments I propose the Government addresses. It is difficult for me to even contemplate how I would go about doing that in respect of this Bill in that I see it as so flawed, I would almost start again. However, if the Government will not do that, it has the serious responsibility to table amendments on Committee Stage and to engage in a real debate with the Legislature rather than its usual arrogant procession through the process to a final result which will not work.

Those are my thoughts on this Disability Bill which I am pleased to have been able to give. I look forward to the Minister's response to comments from this side of the House and his view on a proper, structured debate on how we can change this Bill for the better.

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