"I could get into the pubs but there's a good chance I would have to drive 15 miles home to go to the toilet," says Gerry Malone from Carling ford. "Very few have accessible loos."
He is a wheelchair user and is talking about the pubs in Dundalk, a town which he often visits.
At a recent seminar on accessibility, organised by Fine Gael TD Mr Jimmy Deenihan in Shelbourne Park, Dublin, speakers were agreed on one point - that enforcement of the Republic's building regulations regarding access is patchy, to say the least.
In the North, says Monica Wilson of Disability Action, "the regulations are enforced". Nevertheless, according to a Disability Action publication, "there may be difficulties with physically getting around in the environment, in shops, offices, hotels, pubs, cinemas etc".
In the Republic, says Gerry Malone, things are improving slowly.
"Dundalk is not perfect but it is getting better. About two years ago there wouldn't have been a disabled parking space in any part of the two main streets in Dundalk but now there are four or five. The footpaths are all being relaid at the moment and are being dished. But there are still buildings going up that aren't accessible.
"The attitude in a few places is: `we don't want disabled people'. If it's going to cost money to make it accessible they don't want it.
"It hasn't occurred to building owners that disabled people have money to spend and are entitled to go in as much as able-bodied people."
The building regulations in the Republic provide for buildings to be accessible where it is "reasonable and practicable" to do so.
According to Elaine Shields, of Dundalk Access Group - of which Gerry Malone is also a member - some architects have honoured the ambiguous regulations but most have not. Making matters worse, she says, is "the plethora of so-called `designers' - who are not architecturally qualified - being permitted to enter the planning arena for buildings for public usage".
Few of these seem to have more than a nodding acquaintance with the regulations or with the criteria laid down by the National Rehabilitation Board for putting them into effect. In Northern Ireland, matters may be somewhat better, but they are not all that much better if this quote from Disability Action is anything to go by: "If people of only one religion could get on to buses or trains or if people of only one gender could access public buildings, there would quite rightly be a public outcry. The situation of disabled people is as stated above and is still accepted in our society."
Given this common experience North and South, one can see the sense in a call by Mr Ken Ewart of the University of Ulster at the seminar in Shelbourne Park for access to be included as one of the issues to be dealt with on a 32-county basis under the Belfast Agreement.