I raised the matter of the need for wheelchair accessible buses yesterday at the Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport and last night during Private Members' time in the House. I am glad to have the opportunity to do so again tonight. It is an appalling indictment of the record of this Government in regard to people with disabilities that the need to provide wheelchair accessible vehicles in the context of new investment in public transport should have to be raised here.
The Minister will be aware of the protest being made at Heuston Station by John Doyle, who is the chairperson of the Bray branch of the Wicklow Wheelchair Association and who is active in the network of the Irish Council of People with Disabilities and Centres for Independent Living. He is also a member of the Eastern Health Board. Mr. Doyle is an informed and consistent voice in the area of disability. It is a disgrace that he must mount such a vigil at Heuston Station to have his voice heard. For my own part, I can but salute his courage, tenacity and leadership.
Surely the Minister cannot but be aware that the expenditure on inaccessible double-decker buses, to which she has committed herself, directly conflicts with Government policy as stated in the Strategy for Equality, the excellent report of the Commission on People with Disabilities chaired by Mr. Justice Flood. What has happened to the Government's commitment, arising from the work of that commission, to mainstream services for people with a disability? If the Minister with responsibility for transport is willing to set aside the principle of mainstreaming, as this decision indicates, what are the wider implications for initiatives such as the Human Rights Commission Bill and the Equal Status Bill?
Was the Government merely wasting the time, energy and patience of people with a disability in engaging in a consultation process if a contemptuously discriminatory decision such as this is allowed to proceed? Is the Minister aware of the Government commitment to disability-proof all programmes and expenditure to ensure that the needs and rights of disabled people are met within the general population as opposed to the historic default policy of ghettoising disabled people? Is the Minister leading her Department and the public transport providers back onto an undistinguished path in associating her name and her reputation with this ignorant and most hurtful decision?
The collective failure of the entire Fianna FáilProgressive Democrats Cabinet in respect of this decision and in respect of the very significant expenditure involved is a blatant disregard of the stated commitment to mainstream service for people with disabilities. The failure to provide a public transport infrastructure that is accessible to disabled people ensures the exclusion of that group of people within society from opportunities in the areas of employment and education as well as in regard to simple social and family outings and opportunities to exercise a meaningful independence.
Surely the Minister is aware that such restrictions follow on as an inevitable consequence of this decision. The budget of 1999, as announced here last week, included a scheme to encourage disabled people to take up employment opportunities. It provided a weekly payment equivalent to a single return taxi fare. This decision on segregated buses for the able-bodied shows how pathetic that budget provision actually was and demonstrates that it was little more than a figleaf offered by a Government which has shown a monumental failure to understand the realities of the experience of people with a disability. The European Union is a party to the decision that £8.5 million will be spent on the offending buses in a redistribution of funds originally intended for investment in Luas.
The European Commission itself is committed to ensuring that Structural Funds should not be used for programmes or practices that exclude any group in a member state availing of the fund. Ultimately, that is where this decision may yet come undone and I urge the Minister to reconsider it in the light of people with a disability, who could be any of us here who may break a leg or have some other misfortune as well as, for example, people who are confined to a wheelchair for life. I hope that will lead the Minister to review that decision and that efforts to deal with the tragedy of the traffic congestion which besets us all will not once again discriminate against the most disadvantaged in our society.