Maria McCormack (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I wish her well in her role. We do really need her to succeed in it.

I want to highlight a serious and ongoing issue that I hope she will give serious attention to, which is the continued exclusion of people with disabilities from the planning and design of public projects. Time and again, infrastructure schemes are rolled out nationwide without adequate consideration for accessibility. It is not acceptable in 2025. It is not fair and it is not inclusive. For example, there are kiosks all over the country to recycle bottles and cans under the deposit return scheme. This is a great initiative in principle but how can we call it a national scheme when so many of the kiosks are simply not wheelchair friendly? When a person with a disability is unable to participate in a national initiative, that is not progress; that is exclusion.

In my home county of Laois, a brand-new, state-of-the-art library was opened. One would expect that in this day and age, in a new build, accessibility would be a given, yet the lift in this new facility cannot accommodate a standard wheelchair. Let us imagine the message that sends out to a young wheelchair user who wants to visit the library and read books like everyone else. It is not about box-ticking; it is about dignity, equal access and basic rights. People with disabilities must be included from the very start of the planning process and not as an afterthought. It is something I feel strongly about. We need mandatory accessibility audits for all publicly funded projects and we need real consultation with the disability community because they know what is needed. Inclusion should not be optional; it should be automatic. It should be built in and not bolted on. People with disabilities just want to be treated the same as everybody else.