Disabled Drivers and Passengers Scheme
Seanad Éireann — 2020-10-07
============================================================

Mary Seery Kearney (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach

I appreciate and hear that the Minister of State recognises the challenge. What we are really homing in on are the qualifying criteria for the primary medical certificate. I accept the need to confine the parking permit to people with genuine mobility issues. I get that link and the point was very well made. However, the parking permit is inextricably linked to the adaptation of cars for driving purposes and the grant aid for that. Consequently, if a person is missing one upper limb he or she still has to adapt a car. Such people may be able to walk the distance to shopping or work but they still have to incur the expenditure and we need to address that element more so than the criteria. We need to decouple those aspects from each other and circle that in red. I had considered that this might be a matter for the Minister of State with responsibility for disability, Deputy Rabbitte. I will pursue it with her as well but I appreciate the Minister of State's response.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2020-10-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:39+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-10-07