Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 March 2004
165 Mr. Stanton asked the Minister for Finance the money allocated by his Department in 2003 and 2004 to directly fund services for persons with disabilities and the money allocated to enabling persons with disabilities to more easily access services of his Department. [8640/04]
View answerAs the Deputy will appreciate, providing services to persons with disabilities is not among the functions of this Department and, consequently, the Department's Estimates for 2003 and 2004 do not contain allocations for directly funding such services. However, the Department's Estimates for both years contain an allocation of €7.618 million in each year for payments to the promoters of certain charitable lotteries. The main beneficiary of this allocation in 2003 was the Rehab Group which received €5.845 million, while the Polio Fellowship of Ireland and the Irish Wheelchair Association were among the other beneficiaries.
As regards enabling persons with disabilities to more easily access the Department's services, the Department's Estimates for 2003 and 2004 do not contain specific allocations for this purpose. However, in 2003, the special projects unit of the Department spent €2,178 on Braille key panels for attachment to the Department's time and attendance clocks and the departmental training unit spent a further €600 in providing services for visually-impaired staff at presentations and talks. The Department will continue to keep under review the accessibility of its services to persons with disabilities.
I should add that responsibility for the improvement of physical access to the various buildings occupied by my Department rests with the Office of Public Works, OPW, and my Department maintains contact with the OPW regarding the implementation of access improvements. In 2003, at the Department's request, the OPW provided an external disabled access lift from the South Road into Government Buildings, and in 2004, the OPW has been requested to provide a similar access at the front door of the Department's Mount Street offices. In view of the OPW's cross-departmental role in this area, I have arranged for it to supply information about its activities directly to the Deputy.
