Vol. 453 No. 3
107 Miss M. Wallace asked the Minister for the Environment the amount and nature of all spending within his Department and by bodies under his Department's aegis on schemes specifically directed towards meeting the needs of people with disabilities. [9374/95]
Under the disabled persons grant scheme, administered by county councils and county borough corporations, assistance is provided for the adaptation or extension of, or provision of additional facilities in existing houses specifically to meet the needs of disabled persons. My Department recoups 50 per cent of the costs, up to a maximum of £4,000, incurred by local authorities in the payment of individual grants. A provision of £3.1 million is included for this purpose in my Department's Estimates for 1995.
The access for persons with disabilities grants scheme, administered by county councils and county borough corporations, is a once-off scheme aimed at improving access for people with disabilities, especially those in wheelchairs, to public parks and other outdoor recreational amenities which lack such access at present. The maximum allowable grant under the scheme is £10,000 in any individual case and a provision of £500,000 has been made for it in the 1995 Estimates.
Expenditure is incurred by local authorities from their housing capital allocations on the provision of accommodation for disabled persons, but details of the precise amounts involved are not available in my Department. However, returns submitted by local authorities indicate that a total of 30 houses were constructed or acquired by them for disabled persons in 1994. The total number of disabled persons' dwellings in the local authority housing stock, at 31 December 1994 was 2,689, and a further 39 were at construction stage at that date.
Under the grant scheme for traffic management measures in the area covered by the Dublin Transportation Initiative, funding can be provided for the implementation of projects designed to improve facilities for people with disabilities. In 1994, grants totalling almost £300,000 were allocated to the local authorities in the area for improved pedestrian facilities — including dished footpaths and special facilities for visually impaired people.
