Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this important issue and there is no pressure attached. It is important to state that the HSE has no statutory responsibility for providing transport to day services and that transport to day services is not usually provided for service users. At the same time I would preface that by saying that the HSE, under disability, spends in excess of €40 million every year on transport, while it provides no transport. I am trying to work that out myself and that is why I have taken ownership of the chair of the transport committee where I have put everybody around the table to look at all available routes. It is not only that but it is also to look at the primary medical certificates, the blue badge and everything.

There is an inequality in CHO 1. It charges €4 per day and the Senator is right that it is a closed route option. It is not part of the open routes and if it was part of that, there would be no charge whatsoever on it. On the other hand I have to compliment CHO 1 for doing this. It meant that no service user lost a day service. In other CHOs they have paid for the transport and reduced the service users' attendance at the day services whereas in Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan they came up with the €4 per day charge in order that people would not lose access to their day services, which was a balancing measure. I do not think that was right and transport is being provided for people attending day services in other CHOs, so why would it not be provided equally and on the same basis in all CHOs? It is the only CHO in the country where you have to pay €4.

In Leitrim, the Local Link has been running a pilot, which has been positive, and we need to see that expanded. We need to move away from closed routes to open routes and those open routes have a benefit for the climate and the locality. Such a HSE open routes model could be used for older persons as well as for persons with a disability. It could also possibly be used for people who need to access a medical appointment. They could all be accommodated within the same running time as opposed to running the bus first thing in the morning just for the disability service, then running it later on in the day to go to the day centre with older persons and perhaps running it later on in the day for people who need hospital appointments. A little bit more collaboration and joined-up thinking is what is required in order that we can have open routes, which would be funded through the Department of Transport. The Department of Transport needs to do that because there needs to be equitable access to all routes, regardless of location. To be fair to the Department of Transport, it has done phenomenal work since I have come into office in expanding its Local Link service and in making its fleet far more accessible and better integrated. Perhaps this is something I will take further. One of the reasons I have had these conversations is to see how we can address the inequality of the €4 charge in CHO 1 versus the other eight CHOs that do not have a charge.