Shameful mobility and access barriers persist in Mayo

Most of us take our ability to get out and about and travel for granted. But for many, it’s not as simple as lacing up the shoes and setting off. For people with disabilities, getting to where they need to go can often be fraught with barriers, serving to make their world a smaller, more dangerous place. And access to fit-for-purpose transportation can be prohibitively difficult to obtain.
A report by the Ombudsman, Ger Deering, published last week, was scathing in its assessment of access to personal transport supports for people with disabilities. Scattered with terms such as ‘shameful’, ‘unfair’, ‘neglect’ and ‘unacceptable’, the report highlights significant gaps in a number of supports for people with disabilities, including a lack of funding for accessing transport.
Take the means-tested Motorised Transport Grant, supporting people with disabilities to buy cars so they can access employment. After its closing in February 2013, one of many cuts inflicted on the most vulnerable in society in the aftermath of the crash, an alternative was mooted, but in a typical display of lip service, was never delivered. Issues around the Disabled Drivers and Disabled Passengers scheme, providing tax reliefs linked to buying and using specially constructed or adapted vehicles also persist, with the Ombudsman commenting that the scheme has ‘inequitable and inadequate eligibility criteria in primary legislation’.
Meanwhile, accessing public transport with a disability is a lottery. Bus Éireann’s website states that while wheelchair accessibility is available on many coaches operating on Expressway and Regional services, routes may be limited due to constraints regarding accessible bus stops. Our trains are not wheelchair accessible without assistance, and if you require such help, you cannot depend on it being available when you turn up at the station. Instead, you need to call in advance and book. Heaven forbid that a person using a wheelchair might want to travel spontaneously.
If you do manage to reach your intended destination, lifts are frequently out of order. Air travel, too, is fraught with stress; tales broken wheelchairs (or indeed, broken buggies) emerging from flights abound, though such incidents are mostly highlighted on social media as opposed to in the media.
Such inadequacies prevent people with disabilities from participating fully in their communities, something upon which equal access to personal transport is dependent.
Deering’s report highlighted the fact that Ombudsman’s office has been seeking reform of transport supports for over a decade. Indeed, this timeline is borne out by a study published back in 2011 in the journal Disability and Rehabilitation, which highlighted the many challenges faced by people with visual impairments in urban and rural Ireland, and the effects of those challenges, including loneliness and isolation.
A stroll around my own town of Ballina reveals these challenges in plain sight. Those of us without mobility issues tend not to notice these things, but our paths are littered with excessive street fittings apparently dropped at random with little thought for planning: signage poles (so many poles!), bins, trees, parking meters, lamp posts, service boxes, overgrown hedges, bike racks, steps, street furniture, shop signage and temporary traffic signage, traffic cones and other paraphernalia.
A cobbled texture on parts of Ballina’s main street, though aesthetically pleasing and designed as a traffic calming measure, makes for an unpleasant experience for people with mobility issues, and there are many pinch points on the public footpaths where no wheelchair user could possibly feel safe. Cars obstructing drop kerbs – where they sporadically exist – is frequent. Dog mess is ubiquitous; a delightful bonus for wheelchair users. Isn’t it grand not to have to worry about any of these things?
Mr Deering’s report references the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by the Irish Government. Under this, the Government has an onus to provide transport access on an equal basis with others to enable people with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life. Instead, discrimination continues unapologetically. “All too often in this country,” he comments, “we look back at shameful things that have happened in the past and wonder how such things could have happened... Sadly, we do not appear to have learned from the past.”
Quite.
Mahatma Gandhi maintained that the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. In Ireland, people with disabilities are limited in their social lives, employment options, access to healthcare and education, because we fail to meet their basic transport and mobility needs.
It’s clear that some people remain more equal and important than others.