Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Irish Wheelchair Association, IWA, has made it clear there is a need for a national mandatory minimum accessible standard for infrastructure for active travel and for road developments. I want to tackle a subset of this issue. It might come as a surprise to some that there are many scheduled bus services provided in this country that are not wheelchair accessible. Apparently, the National Transport Authority, NTA, does not make it a condition of the licence of these scheduled bus services that they be wheelchair accessible. This is particularly an issue for people living in outlying areas where taxis are not a possibility when travelling 50 km or 60 km to a county town. This is a huge challenge. Is it proposed either to bring in legislation or give an instruction to the NTA that no public transport on scheduled services should be licensed unless it is wheelchair accessible?

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