The Irish Wheelchair Association, IWA, has made it clear there is a need for a national mandatory minimum accessible standard for infrastructure for active travel and for road developments. I want to tackle a subset of this issue. It might come as a surprise to some that there are many scheduled bus services provided in this country that are not wheelchair accessible. Apparently, the National Transport Authority, NTA, does not make it a condition of the licence of these scheduled bus services that they be wheelchair accessible. This is particularly an issue for people living in outlying areas where taxis are not a possibility when travelling 50 km or 60 km to a county town. This is a huge challenge. Is it proposed either to bring in legislation or give an instruction to the NTA that no public transport on scheduled services should be licensed unless it is wheelchair accessible?

Every agency of the State should be cognisant and conscious of the need to align with overall Government policy on disability access. There may be operational issues in terms of adjusting every single bus in the fleet right now. I would have to check all that out. I do not want to make commitments in advance but I am very clear that there should be a legal and legislative framework governing all of this in terms of access to our public transport system for people in wheelchairs and for people with disabilities more generally. Just as transferring to electric vehicles will take a bit of time, so will this. Where we are purchasing new fleet, it should be wheelchair accessible and accessible for people with disabilities. I will revert back to the Deputy with a more comprehensive position on this matter.