Mr. Seamus Boland:

Before I go into our recommendations, I want to read what a 77 year old woman in east Clare had to say:

This is my only way of getting anywhere. I use it every Saturday, without fail, to get my shopping and often on a Friday to get to my doctor. Without it, I just have to stay at home. It would take my entire pension to pay for a taxi. It would be very lonesome without it.

In that short statement one can see why it is so important to the average, ordinary person. It may or may not be profitable for the services, but it is essential under our national remit to provide public service transport. In terms of recommendations, Irish Rural Link has been involved in advocating rural transport for nearly 25 years of its existence and we have continually asked for the following transport recommendations to be looked at.

We believe that there is a need for an overall transport review to look at making transport services fit for purpose. Therefore, within that review we want Bus Éireann, Irish Rail and the whole private sector to be looked at. We also, as part of this review, want an examination of the public service obligation. It may be fit for purpose, it may not be, but we need to review whether it is. The effectiveness of free transport passes needs to be examined too, with particular reference to the fact that many people living in rural areas are unable to use it because there is no public transport available.

There needs to be a new national transport survey on accessibility of rural transport, to update the information on the level of unmet transport needs in rural areas. As mentioned during the digital switch-over that we talked about, we believe that there is a minimum of 93,000 people affected by that unmet need. We believe that it is probably higher. We want to improve the integration of transport services between local rural transport and the national transport services, including Bus Éireann and other services, including health related and school transport services, to ensure full access to public transport and a seamless integration between services.