Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As this is a rural committee, I will focus on the requirements of rural people and I would like to do so under a number of headings. What we know is that many more rural people, as evidenced from the travel to work surveys, travel to cities to work than heretofore, and they are travelling further. I will take Galway as an example, although from the very useful map, one can extrapolate the same thing for Limerick, Waterford, Cork and elsewhere. The commuter routes out of Galway are as follows: Galway to Carraroe; Galway to Clifden; Galway to Headford, Cong, Shrule, Ballinrobe and beyond; Galway to Tuam; Galway to Roscommon; Galway to Loughrea and Ballinasloe; and Galway to Gort and Ennis. What absolutely blows my mind is the lack of definition of what a commuter service is. There does not seem to be any focus on the fact that a large number of people want to come into the centre in the morning and to get out as fast as they can in the evening. However, they do not all start and finish at the same time.

I am going to define what a commuter service should be and what should be put in place along these routes. At an absolute minimum, it should be within the hours of 7.30 a.m. to 9 a.m. and should be every half an hour. For the rest of the day, it should be at hourly intervals. With the railway line from Ballybrophy to Limerick, one would be better off walking. There is one service in the day, one each way. Who would want to take a service like that? Miss one and wait until tomorrow. With a commuter service, one misses one and gets the next. Is there a commitment to that kind of frequency on the main commuter lines in and out of all the major towns and cities with third level institutions and hospitals because otherwise I cannot see how one will get the passengers? It becomes a fáinne fí, a vicious circle. If one does not provide the service, one will not get the passengers.

I accept the witnesses do not have responsibility for rail outside Dublin. However, it is interesting to look at the passenger numbers and the population of a town like Athenry. Proportionate to the size of the town, there is a huge number of people using the rail service from Athenry to Galway. Why is this? It is because by accident, between the Limerick, Athlone and Dublin trains, one has a reasonable service frequency.

I would like the view of the witnesses on what is a commuter service. Is it one bus in the morning and one bus in the evening, with an hour and a half frequency after that? Am I right that to really attract commuters, one needs at least half an hour frequencies during commuter times and maybe hourly at other times?

I am totally supportive of the RuralLink idea, that is, that one runs buses on the main routes and one gets the RuralLink buses to pick up people in the villages and smaller places.

The next issue is my hobbyhorse. We, in rural Ireland, are fed up paying a subsidy in fares because people do not get fair play. There is a fear of giving them fair play. I am going to stay on this issue until we get justice. The rate per kilometre on rural services, non-Expressway, is twice that of the urban services. That is a simple fact. It is archaic and there is a fear of changing it because a slight rebalancing might be required. It does not matter how much rural people are over-charged as long as it is not rebalanced in respect of people who happen to live in big cities. We are not taking this anymore and we are going to keep highlighting it until we get justice.

That leads to the question my colleague, Deputy Fitzmaurice, alluded to. Bus Éireann serves in excess of one million people in the most densely populated part of the country and it gets €60 million of a subsidy. Bus Éireann and RuralLink between them get less than €50 million and they serve up to 4 million people. Maybe Mr. Hernan can confirm this, because he has access to the figures and knows the facts, but no State subsidy goes to Expressway, so we can take it out of the cake, and if I break it down the figure further, my understanding is that a fair bit of that €50 million goes to urban services in Cork, Waterford and Galway. In fact, when I take the rural services, I find that the subsidy per head of population is absolutely minuscule.

Some 1.1 million people live in the county of Dublin. There are 800,000 people living in Connacht-Ulster. That includes Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan and the province of Connaught. One would expect that Connacht-Ulster would get eight elevenths of the transport subsidy that Dublin receives. One would think it would be the other way around in a city where there are thousands of people using the services and that the subsidy would be hugely skewed towards the rural areas.

We find, however, that it is the other way and that there is total inertia, bad services and unfair charges. We do not need to wonder why people do not use the buses. Country people are very pragmatic but I wish for services to be provided to meet our needs.

Other people may have difficulty getting responses to representations on school bus services but the service I get in that regard is first class. The co-operation and facilitation of the Bus Éireann school bus service is fantastic and I compliment it in that regard. I accept that it cannot go outside the rules. Is Bus Éireann going to move into the 21st century and focus services on meeting people's needs?

It is impossible for young people attending university to get accommodation in places such as Galway. To qualify for a non-adjacent grant, one must live 45 km or more from the college. The witnesses can see on their map that Carraroe is the furthest westerly point of Galway Bay. Most of it is less than 45 km from Galway. Even if a student from Carraroe can get accommodation in Galway, he or she will not be able to afford it because the adjacent area grant would not pay for a few weeks of accommodation. Travelling 45 km from Galway would bring one beyond Loughrea, Dunmore or Tuam. A significant number of students and young working people have to get home in the evening because they cannot afford to stay in the city. They cannot get home either, however, because there is no bus to take them there. I acknowledge that work is being done on an evening service but it is too slow and more is needed. It is archaic to be unable to get out of town after 6 p.m. on the arterial non-Expressway rural routes and it does not face the new reality. These are practical and doable services for which there is a market but the service must be provided.

I ask Bus Éireann and the NTA to consider a policy of toilets being provided on all new buses with scheduled route durations of more than two hours. That is not necessary on short services but it is important, particularly for elderly people, that there be a toilet on buses with a journey duration of two hours or more. Most modern buses that undertake long journeys have toilets.

Rail and subsidies were mentioned. We are running national transport services for the entire country, not just areas with lots of people. All people pay taxes. The loss on the Cork to Dublin line is €45 million, while there are losses of €11 million on the Limerick to Ballybrophy line and €13 million on the Limerick to Galway line. The loss on Dublin suburban lines is €51 million. The witnesses may point out that the loss per passenger on the Cork to Dublin line and the Dublin suburban lines is far less than on the other lines I have mentioned. Of course, it is less per passenger. How does one get passengers to use a service that hardly exists? If the services are provided, passengers will use them and the price per passenger will decrease. Those losses take the central costs into account. The savings would drop dramatically were the lines to be closed because there would then be no saving on the central services. These lines need to be upgraded rather than closed. They will not solve Iarnród Éireann's problem because, simply, all rail lines need to be subsidised.

On Dublin, for years there was a very good campaign to reopen the Harcourt Street tram line. It is now the Luas line from Bride's Glen. It was also very fortuitous that the Broadstone line through Cabra was preserved as it is also now a Luas line. For many years, people wondered why there was an empty tunnel under the Phoenix Park when most people want to arrive at Connolly Station rather than Heuston Station. Connolly Station is in the part of the city where people work. Suddenly, hey presto, the tunnel could be opened. Services are not frequent enough, however, and it is a pity the train from Galway does not use the tunnel or arrive into Connolly Station on the Mullingar line, but that is another day's work.

There is an open railway line from Navan to Dublin which is regularly used by trains. The only problem is that they are freight trains from Tara Mines. Why does the commuter service which terminates in Drogheda not go to the railway station in the centre of Navan town? Has there been a costing of the upgrade of that railway line to allow it to take passenger trains? It seems obvious that the train could run to Drogheda, turn left, as do the ore trains, go to Navan and a few more stations between Drogheda and Navan and then return. One would not need additional trains because the ones currently operating to Drogheda would suffice. Why is the Navan-Drogheda loop not being used for commuter rail to Dublin? In a similar manner to the Harcourt Street tram line now being used by the Luas or the tunnel under the Phoenix Park once again being used, some day the penny will drop and the line from Drogheda to Navan will reopen, as will the line from Athenry to Claremorris. The latter will not happen under this Government but it will open in my lifetime.