Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like my colleague Senator Joe O'Reilly, I compliment the wonderful work and distinguished career of Dick Dowling, who, as a councillor, Senator and TD, was a wonderful public representative from the mid-1970s into the 1980s and Garret Fitzgerald's era in politics. His death represents a significant loss to the Fine Gael family and to people in his home county of Kilkenny. I want to acknowledge that in any way I can.

I want to raise what is a major issue in my part of the world, namely a bus service that was cancelled literally ten weeks after it started. The 228 bus route runs from Kinsale to Fivemilebridge through Ballinhassig and all the way into Cork city via Bishopstown. The route serves two colleges and a hospital. It is a significant part of public transport infrastructure. It started on 16 October. I understand that negotiations about changing the route started in early January. There is now an indication that the route will be permanently changed and that, as a result, Ballinhassig will have no bus service. Students on the route from Kinsale used this bus service to get to the two colleges to which I refer. I spoke to a person yesterday who is receiving cancer treatment in Cork University Hospital, CUH, who will no longer have access to a bus service.

Ten weeks after the route was launched, the National Transport Authority, NTA, agreed to having the service altered. There is a significant issue here in the context of accountability. The first question we must ask relates to who the NTA spoke to about this matter. I wrote to the NTA on 4 January but it would not deal with me. Now this major change has happened. Ballinhassig needs a bus service. Commuters need the service. Significant moneys are being put into smarter travel and other initiatives. For people to have only a bus service for ten or 12 weeks and for it then to be literally taken away is totally inappropriate.

I propose that we have a serious discussion with the Minister for Transport about the NTA in the context of its accountability. Who is accountable? I have emailed and telephoned the NTA. I was reliably informed that I would receive a response this afternoon. It has not arrived yet. I ask that the Cathaoirleach and the Acting Leader use their good offices in order to have the Minister come to the House in order that we can ask him about the governance of and accountability within the NTA and in order that patrons in Ballinhassig, which the Cathaoirleach knows very well, will have a bus service. There is no accountability within the NTA at present.