Mr. Seamus Boland:

With the Chairman's permission, I will provide a brief introduction, Ms Lennon will speak about what rural transport means and I will finish with recommendations.

Irish Rural Link, as the committee will be aware, is a national voluntary organisation with over 1,200 community groups which are active members. These are people who are actively engaged in providing a range of services and development in rural areas right across the country. We also have a link with our Northern Ireland counterparts.

In terms of transport, since the beginning of the State, rural transport has been a major issue for those living in rural areas. The establishment of Bus Éireann saw the development of a rural transport service and was able to connect people to other areas. However, it continues to not reach everyone.

Transport remains top of every person's list of grievances when it comes to rural communities. Irish Rural Link was one of the co-ordinators with The Wheel in the digital switch-over programme. During that programme we discovered some 93,000 households that do not have access to public transport - we believe the figure is higher but that was merely a factual discovery because we are involved in that programme. Overall, there were 120,000 people living in rural areas who had no access to public transport. Many of those households have the free transport pass but, unfortunately, it is not usable. The fact they cannot use the free transport pass is a major loss to those families.

Lack of public transport impacts both socially and economically on people's lives. For people who are unable to drive because they cannot afford a car, because of health reasons or because they are elderly, etc., this means almost imprisonment in their own homes for large parts of the year. In terms of social transfer, Bus Éireann receives funding from the Department of Social Protection for the free travel pass. However, as I stated, people all around the country are still not able to use that pass.

For many years, there have been warnings that Bus Éireann and Irish Rail services would be reduced in rural areas. While not necessarily caused by Bus Éireann or Irish Rail, such warnings always issue. Irish Rural Link is tired of the continuous use of the threat to rural services every time a dispute or a controversy arises in public transport. We believe it is an obligation of the State to provide public transport. Services, not only bus services but post office and other services, are always used as the bargaining tool, the threat, the meat in the sandwich. Irish Rural Link would call on the various parties involved to stop threatening rural communities with this kind of loss of service because this causes fear and worry among ordinary people who use the service on a daily or weekly basis.

We believe the community rural transport programme has been the Cinderella of transport in the last few years and has lost out heavily in terms of cutbacks and losses in revenue, but the importance of that programme cannot be underestimated. I ask Ms Lennon to go through why this is so important to so many people.