Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to highlight that today is Make Way Day and that we need to ensure our footpaths are clear for wheelchair users. I call on homeowners and the councils to cut back hedging, and call on people to stop illegally parking on footpaths and to make way and be considerate. I acknowledge that the councils, from what I have observed of Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council, have been installing wands on footpaths to stop illegal parking. While their objective is in regard to social distancing, it does have the side benefit of ensuring we have to make way.

In this context, I ask that we have a conversation at some point on the criteria for eligibility for parking permits for people with disabilities. I would venture to say, on the basis of a representation that I will put before the House, that the criteria as they stand are very narrow and quite archaic, and do not take into account all of the struggles people have. We need to widen the definition. The criteria state, for example, that to be granted the medical card and everything that flows from that, a person has to be severely and permanently disabled, and it shall only be accessed by reference to one or more of the following medical criteria, namely, a loss of both legs or lower limbs, or a loss of both arms or both hands, and the criteria then go on to other things.

I have a constituent who lost one arm in an appalling accident and she has had decades of applying for assistance. She has to pay for the adjustments to her car herself. She has been denied every single time she has applied, even though, every moment of every day, her disability is brought home to her. She has to live with lack of ability for toileting, for carrying shopping and for all of these things due to the fact she has one arm, yet she does not fit the criteria and has all the financial hardship that falls from that.

I ask that we have a debate in this House about the criteria for eligibility.