The Road Traffic (Traffic and Parking) Regulations, 1997, empower local authorities to provide parking bays for people with disabilities and also provide for the issuing of parking permits, allowing the use of such bays, to a person suffering from a disability which prevents the person from walking or causes undue hardship to the person in walking. Both the parking bays involved and the parking permit include the white wheelchair-user symbol which is a standardised symbol at EU level and is specifically mentioned in the EU Council recommendation on a standardised parking card for people with disabilities.
The appropriate form of words to be incorporated in legislation and regulations to refer to people with disabilities is a matter on which I will have regard to any advice from my colleague, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, or from the various voluntary agencies and interests concerned.