A group of people with disabilities who were invited to Leinster House to deliver training on accessibility ended up “trapped” and “embarrassed” after a lift broke down in the parliamentary complex.
The organisation, which provides disability awareness training, said they were “astonished” at how inaccessible Leinster House was after their disastrous visit to Dublin last year.
In an email, they described supposedly accessible toilets that weren’t large enough to cater for wheelchairs, buses being refused access to drop off people with mobility issues, and a broken-down lift that left five members “stranded.”
They told the head of the Oireachtas that members were stuck on a corridor and “very embarrassed” as able-bodied people had to “edge” their way past them on their way to offices or lunch.
A message said: “From the moment of our arrival, we encountered barriers and exclusion.”
The visit was made by members of the HSE Gold Star Disability Awareness Training programme and volunteers from Tipperary last June on the invitation of an Oireachtas member.
In the email, they said the room where they delivered their training session was inaccessible on “a number of disability access levels.”
Then, when members were trying to go downstairs to the restaurant, one lift broke down and another was discovered to be out of service.
The email said: “The lift to offer access to the lower corridor en route to the restaurant broke down when we had five people safely down, leaving others stranded at the top.
“Once these five people tried to continue to access the restaurant, they were met with a note on the second lift that said, ‘Temporarily Out of Order’.”
The message continued: “Every person there was tired, embarrassed, disappointed, hungry and let down once more in terms of their rights to universal access and the dignity of using a toilet privately.”