Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that there are limits to what the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, can do in this regard, but he does have the soft power to discuss this issue with Irish Rail. The Minister of State can appreciate that residents are completely exasperated and have no trust in any private provider that is providing what is essentially public access. We have a situation where a private entity is in charge of public access to the public transport system. It is not working. We are not just talking about a period of weeks here, but a period of years. The lifts are consistently out of order. Anti-social behaviour is persisting on the stairwell. It is not particularly well-lit. We have received communication from a person who has a visual impairment who says he finds it particularly difficult to negotiate the stairwell. Something has to give.

I might suggest to the Minister of State that perhaps the Minister with responsibility for local government would make contact directly with Irish Rail and encourage it to make contact with the Richmond Homes entity, to potentially acquire the section of the site that would enable Iarnród Éireann to maintain and manage that stairwell. If the Minister of State were to visit it, he would absolutely agree with me that what is happening is not sustainable. When you come to a point when you have been campaigning for something for five years, you come to the conclusion that those who are overseeing it just do not really care. We need to find somebody who does care to take it over because there are children, wheelchair users, people with mobility issues, elderly people and people who feel vulnerable and afraid who are not utilising that stairwell. Therefore, their access to the public transport network is being curtailed and nobody is a winner in that scenario. I therefore ask the Minister of State to impress on his colleague the need to make representations to Irish Rail so that it would, in turn, make representations to Richmond Homes to acquire the land the stairwell is on in order that it can be maintained in a much more appropriate fashion.

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