Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is a very important subject and I thank the Chairman for allowing me in because I am not a member of the committee. I live in Mayo, in a rural part of the west of Ireland, and this topic is hugely important to me. Following on from Deputy Fitzmaurice's contribution, it is extremely worrying and it begs the question as to who is in control of providing public transport services to rural Ireland. It would seem that the operators make the decisions. For those of us who live in rural Ireland that is a crazy situation. It derives from being a political decision. In 2015 the Taoiseach responded to the serious issue of cutting routes by saying that buses cannot be driving around boreens. With a Government response such as that it is no wonder we are in this situation.

In regard to the €9.4 million in losses, and in context of what is happening economically and financially in the State, if the Government had not allowed the section 110 tax breaks for the vulture funds we could be running the transport service and Bus Éireann as it has been run for 37 years, without making any cuts to staff or to routes. These are the political choices being made and they need to be examined in the wider context.

I am particularly interested in and worried about the Athlone to Westport service and I want to ask the witnesses a couple of key questions on it. This was first mooted in 2015. Since then, in the marketing and the shoring up of that route, it has been said that savings of €1.1 million would be made by cutting the Athlone-Westport, Dublin-Clonmel and Dublin-Derry routes. Perhaps the NTA could give a breakdown of the savings on each of these routes and over what length of time they may be accrued. Could the witnesses also indicate if they have calculated how many extra passengers it would take to make those routes viable to make up the savings of the €1.1 million? What consultation processes took place in the time before the decision was made? When the NTA made the decision, did it take into account the Wild Atlantic Way and the millions of euro being used to market this internationally to bring people to the west of Ireland? Has the decision been made or is it just on the table? Is more consultation to take place? There is quite a lot there but I had to ask.