Hubert McCormack was on his holidays yesterday, but he wasn't happy about it.
The wheelchair user was forced to take leave when the Vantastic service, which he relies on to get him to work, took its vehicles off the road because it cannot meet its insurance and maintenance costs.
Yesterday, he was one of a dozen wheelchair users taking part in a protest vigil outside Leinster House. They were preparing to keep up their vigil until the future of Vantastic is underwritten by the Government.
They said the £105,000 which the Government is to provide towards the immediate deficit which led to the closure of the service is not enough.
They want a commitment to £350,000 a year (less than the capital cost of two double-decker buses), which would keep their eight vans on the road.
Their reluctance to accept the £105,000 and go away was illustrated by teacher Brian Malone, a wheelchair user, who held up a copy of this year's Junior Cert civics paper in which one of the questions features an Irish Times photograph of the group during a previous vigil on behalf of Vantastic. The group, he said, had become part of history - yet it still had to hold protests to keep its service on the road.
Vantastic started in 1994 to provide transport for people with disabilities in Dublin. It has been run as a FAS community employment scheme, and last year got funding from the European Social Fund to buy more vans.
It has eight vans on the road but gets no funding for its insurance of £30,000 a year or towards maintenance.
Three hundred people use the service, according to the Centre for Independent Living which runs it. They include UCD psychology student Sandra O'Donovan, who has to get from Baldoyle to Belfield every day. To make this cross-city trip by public transport, she says, would involve getting up at 6 a.m.
Vantastic gets her there in reasonable time at a reasonable price. The normal fare on the service is £2.50 plus a charge of up to 30p per mile.
Mr Malone, who uses the service to get to work, said the Centre for Independent Living had been warning Government departments for two or three months that Vantastic faced closure. The absence of accessible transport meant people with disabilities could not take up training opportunities which would enable them to earn wages and pay taxes. The Fine Gael spokeswoman on disabilities, Ms Theresa Ahearn, welcomed the Government's £105,000 in immediate funding, but said it represented "crumbs from the rich man's table to people with disabilities simply to cover its shame at having been forced to live up to its promises when in opposition."