For Mr James O'Keeffe (28), the £45.20p a month he gets for transportation is a mobility allowance in name only. It doesn't even cover two taxi trips a week into town.
As a wheelchair-user from Athy, Co Kildare, he says it costs him £6 "just to go in and out to the shops". That's if he is lucky enough to find a cab. With most of his weekly disability allowance spent on food and board, he says, the meagre Government transport benefit requires him to ration his trips out of home. "It makes it very hard to live", he says, "let alone live independently".
However, Mr O'Keeffe is one of the lucky ones. Many wheelchair-users at yesterday's demonstration complained they were unable to get a mobility allowance because of stringent means-testing.
"People should be treated as individuals and means-tested in their own right instead of taking spouses' income into account," says Ms Josephine Jameson from Cavan.
One is "doubly isolated" living in a rural area, she says. Without the Irish Wheelchair Association, which operates a mini-bus service in her locality, many would be stranded.
Criticism was also levelled at the weekly disability allowance. Ms Bridget Boyle, also from Cavan, said the Government didn't seem to realise disabled people "need so much more".
