Sir, - I want to draw your attention once again to the difficulties disabled people in wheelchairs have in getting around Dublin.
I agree with those who have written recently about the scarcity of accessible taxis for disabled people. The problem lies partly in the fact that the council doesn't seem to check whether or not the 400-600 accessible-taxi licensees actually honour their commitment. They hold reduced-rate taxi licences on condition that they equip their cars or vans to carry wheelchairs upright. The original idea was to ensure there were enough accessible taxis so that wheelchair users and other mobility-impaired persons could get around. Yet today such taxis are remarkably hard to find.
I am also concerned about the problems people in wheelchairs have while travelling on the DART. I am a disabled student in my fourth year at Trinity College, to which I commute daily by DART from my home in Shankill. I am familiar with the stations. Very few are accessible and some only partly so. There are no portable ramps available for getting on and off trains. As a rule I've found most DART drivers and members of the public very helpful. People do care. But DART provision for wheelchair users is far from realistic or adequate.
The DART Station in Killester is a sad example. Three weeks ago, on my way to the Irish Wheelchair Association building in Clontarf, I discovered how disastrous the place can be for a wheelchair user. After a rare bad experience with a surly DART driver, I drove up the ramp in my electric wheelchair. Exiting from the ramp onto the cement platform at the top, I had to manoeuvre my wheelchair so that I could straighten it to enter the extremely narrow door leading into the station. One wheel of my chair slipped over the edge of the platform. I fell backwards down the steep steps adjacent to that platform. As my feet shot straight up into the air I banged my head hard on the cement at the bottom of the steps. With the assistance of passengers and the very helpful station agent, I was lifted back up into my chair, trembling and shaking with the shock of the experience.
As my companion and I waited for an ambulance, along with the agent and an extremely kind woman passenger, I learned that the door from the station leading out on to the road in Killester had recently been widened. If the door into the station from the platform at the top of the ramp had also been widened, my accident would not have happened. The place where a widened door would be was occupied by a soft-drinks machine. And this arrangement is found at the DART stop nearest the Irish Wheelchair Association headquarters!
Later, as I was leaving the casualty department at Beaumont Hospital, I was confronted once more by the taxi problem. My father had met me at the hospital but, after trying many different companies over a period of more than an hour, we couldn't get an accessible taxi. We eventually decided that we would have to leave my electric chair at the hospital. We travelled home in an ordinary taxi to Shankill (where I had a manual chair). The next day, the Irish Wheelchair Association van picked up the electric chair from Beaumont and delivered it to Harmonstown DART station (here again the agent was most considerate). My father travelled there to bring the chair back to Shankill. - Yours, etc.,
Mary Collins,
Corbawn Wood,
Shankill,
Co. Dublin.