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

I, too, welcome Ms Gath.

The wording of the Commencement matter is as follows: "The need for the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to make a statement on the report of the national disability inclusion strategy transport working group as it pertains to the review of the disabled drivers scheme" and the urgent need to reform same. The statement Senator Gavin has received was prepared to assist me in answering it. The working group included officials from the Departments of Finance, Health, Social Protection and Transport; representatives of the HSE and the National Disability Authority; three members of the disability stakeholder group, of whom two were individuals with a disability and one a representative of a disabled persons' organisation; and a representative from the Irish Wheelchair Association. Those were the participants in the working group as part of action 104 of the national disability inclusion strategy, NDIS. The group was convened at my request and I chaired it in order to bring all the stakeholders to that conversation and move it along.

The Government is committed to continuously advancing our delivery under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD, including on transport issues. The matter raised relates to a specific action in the national disability inclusion strategy, namely, action 104, which commits us to leading a review of Government-funded transport and mobility schemes for people with disabilities to make proposals for the development of a co-ordinated plan for enhanced provision going forward. The action was designed to inform further work on how transport supports for people with disabilities could be better co-ordinated. In that sense, the purpose of the action was not to conduct a detailed examination of any single specific scheme but to look at the broader transport landscape for people with disabilities and discuss better overall co-ordination of supports. The transport working group was established to achieve progress under action 104. I chaired the group and we made significant progress in addressing the task set out before us. While the disabled drivers and passengers scheme was not the dedicated focus of the working group, it was included in the work of the group following a request from the Minister for Finance who holds responsibility for the scheme. As such, the role and functioning of the scheme were included in the overall development of the proposals for more cohesive overall transport supports.

The Department of Finance provided a number of inputs to the group, based on the work of a criteria subgroup, which it convened specifically on the disabled drivers and disabled passengers scheme. The membership of the criteria subgroup comprised former members of the Disabled Drivers Medical Board of Appeal and principal medical officers in the HSE. Its purpose was to capture their experiences, expertise and perspectives with respect to the practical operational and administrative challenges of the scheme, as well as to explore what alternative vehicular arrangements were available for those with mobility issues based on international experience. The main conclusion of the criteria subgroup is that the scheme needs to be replaced with a fit for purpose, needs-based vehicular adaptation scheme in line with best international practice. The NDIS working group's task has now been completed and the final report, which synthesises submissions made by all members of the transport working group, has been finalised and will be published on the Department's website shortly.

The Senator asked when that will happen. When we met in December, I was not happy with the level of detail that was included in the draft before me at that time. To be fair to the Department of Finance, it had made some submissions which I felt were not reflected in the report. These deal with many of the issues the Senator has outlined. If we are holding a working group, the submissions of all actors must be included. For this reason, I sent the report back to be rewritten before agreeing to publish it. That is the current position, and that is because I was fortunate that the Departments of Finance, Health, Social Protection and Transport participated.