Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been involved in rural transport since as far back as 1999. I thank two people in particular, Fr. Gerard O'Connor and Fr. Pat Condon in Waterford and Tipperary who led it nationally and came up to the transport forum. The rural transport system is doing well in the limited areas where it is provided. I must declare I am a board member of Ring a Link, which operates in Tipperary, Carlow and Kilkenny. The Minister mentioned that on 27 February 2018 the NTA issued a funding application to all 17 rural links to arrange a trial of evening and night services. The deadline for receipt of applications was 16 March. The NTA received applications for 50 services from 12 local link providers. The figures here are vital and Deputy Collins was trying to deal with it. I am on the board and we meet once a month. It is very onerous and it is a voluntary board. We have an excellent manager, staff, team, drivers and people sub-contracting. We are busy trying to keep afloat and trying to manage with the funding we have. The sum of €200,000 for the country would not do one county or half a county. That is the point. Why would they apply and waste their time? All of the application forms are huge. They have to be able to stand up and be accurate and viable. If there were €2 million the Minister would have received a flood of applications.

I graciously accept what the Minister said to Senator Feighan about looking at the 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. service because it is ridiculous. I know this from experience. Ring a Link offered set routes one Christmas. We are demand responsive and pick up at the door. It is an excellent service but the Christmas service did not work out and it needs to be very different. There is a pattern of people who want to socialise or visit people; it is not all about the pubs. The Minister said everything is not about the pubs, but during the talks for Government I attended a pub, out of hours mind you in the early morning and through the back door, for a meeting with the residents and business people of Stepaside. The Minister uses pubs when he wants to also, so he should not be bemoaning that fact. Publicans pay wages to their staff and they pay rates. They do a lot of work. This funding is paltry in the extreme. As I said, if the Ring a Link service got it we might try to put on three or four extra routes.

Many areas in the Minister's Department are running amok and Deputy Healy-Rae mentioned the €2 million that has gone to consultants and on incidental issues while the Minister is giving us a paltry €200,000. In the Dáil during the debate on the transport Bill, the Minister and Deputy Heydon welcomed a representation from Fine Gael. Somebody operating under the auspices of the Minister spent €2 million trying to link the public services card to driver licences. To his credit the Minister pulled it, but €2 million was wasted on a nonsense scheme. There are millions for everything not to mind Dublin where there are billions for everything the Minister is announcing. He talked about going to Kerry and he visited Tipperary and I thank him for that. I brought him around and, in fairness to him, he looked at a lot of things, but he needs to be brought out much more to understand what goes on in rural Ireland because he does not know.

How are the board, the NTA and TII treating rural transport link groups and other voluntary bodies? All of the stakeholders were brought to the meeting mentioned by the Minister, including the IFA. The usual suspects are brought in and half the time the decision has been taken before they come in and the Minister knows this. He knows what happened with the statutory instrument regarding the test for tractors. Again, to his credit, the Minister revoked it when he found out it was done without any consultation. The stakeholders come up here from their day's work. Most of them are volunteers and what are they coming up for? They are coming up for consultations that are finished before they get here. It is an insult. This has to change with regard to rural Ireland. I am a passionate supporter of rural Ireland. It is my duty as I represent rural Ireland.

The Minister mentioned rickshaws. He did not mention sulky racing, which is causing bedlam in my county and many other countries. I have a Private Members' Bill, which the Minister could have asked me about and examined to see whether he could bring in aspects of it if he is so interested in saving lives. There are ten year olds going around the main roads riding donkeys with no licences, no reflective jackets and no safety measures of any kind, but the Minister refuses to look at this. We also have animal cruelty. There were two horrible incidents in Tipperary where two horses were left for dead last week, one in Clonmel which thankfully recovered, and another incident last Friday morning. The Minister would not look at this but he presents us as rural representatives in favour of drink-driving, which is something we are totally not. The mental health issue in Tipperary is savage. It has never been more acute. We have a mental health services Bill, and what the Minister is doing by taking these measures is feeding into it.

The Minister has said we are delaying the Bill. We are delaying it but the Minister delayed it by recommitting it and now he will have to recommit the judicial appointments Bill also. He is a man who does not know what he is doing. He is not in control of what is happening. I have been here for ten years and I have never seen Bills recommitted but because the Minister has made, in the words of an Attorney General, such a dog's dinner of the Bill it has been recommitted. It is a pig's mess, a slop.

This year is no good to us. We are ready to take up money at Ring a Link with our manager, Jackie Meally, to try to offer some type of service to the people I represent in Ahenny, Faugheen, Kilcash, Ninemilehouse, Ballingarry, Killenaule, The Commons, Emly, and Cullen in south Tipperary. We also have Soloheadbeg and Hollyford, Newcastle, Burncourt, Skeheenarinky, Kilsheelan, Annacarty, Cappawhite, Drumbane, Holycross, Upperchurch, Newtown, Dolla and Templetuohy. We do not have services there either.

We have three or four five day a week services in fairness. We put on extra Christmas services some years ago when we got some extra money from the Department and it is all accounted for. One night we spent two hours at a board meeting trying to reconcile a €20 underpayment to Pobal for an audit and rightly so. That is the type of accountability we have for €20. The Minister can spend €1.3 million on a US company that knows nothing about Ireland; he can spend €500,000 on incidentals and he can spend €2 million on a hamfisted effort to try to force people to have their public services card linked to their driver licence. Then the Minister added in L-plate drivers, which will totally isolate young people. It will deny them work and educational opportunities. Anyone here in Dublin tonight will fall over taxis and buses. There is also the Luas and the DART. I do not begrudge the people here anything but we are entitled to some modicum of service. The €460,000 would not operate the logistics. We have a very sophisticated service in Carlow and Kilkenny, and I invite the Minister to Kilkenny to Ring a Link's headquarters for the three county project to see the booking service. It is capable of doing an awful lot more but we need funding. The €460,000 would not organise the logistics for the 50 schemes because they need manpower to be operated. It is very sophisticated. There are tracking devices with which one can find people standing on the road if it were operated properly. It is exceptional equipment, funded by the Department in the main but with a lot of hard work from voluntary boards. We must respect these voluntary boards, the volunteers, the paid staff and the bus contractors. This is like sticking a Band-Aid on a finger that has been cut off instead of going to have a serious operation in hospital.

With regard to the L-plates, the Minister will criminalise young people. They are applying for their tests but they have to wait-----