Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is obvious that some parts of rural areas are not served by the rural transport programme. Can the witnesses from the NTA tell us the areas that have a functioning rural transport programme and the areas that do not? I submitted a question about it some time ago and was told that the NTA was unable to collate that information. I am quite sure that was an error. I am sure that as the governing body, the NTA would have all that information and would be able to furnish us with it. If the witnesses from the NTA do not have it with them today, would they agree to furnish us with it?

In the strategic plan, the NTA mentioned increasing services yet it has reduced the number of Local Link offices from 35 to 17. How could that be a good idea given that the NTA said the services should be locally managed and that it would be a demand-responsive service? How could that be a good idea when many areas do not have any public transport at all? The strategic plan always stated that it was about demand-responsive services. It seems that since the NTA has taken over, it is moving more towards scheduled services so that would conflict with demand-responsive services. I am worried that the rural transport programme is plugging gaps that should be filled by Bus Éireann services. Could the witnesses from the NTA give us figures about how many new Bus Éireann services have been launched in the past year and whether or not they were new routes or involved increased frequency on existing routes?

Among the key findings of the NTA's first review was that some services ended too early in the evening so some of them were deemed to be non-performing. Given that this was the NTA's first review, has it extended those services to see whether there was an uptake or the number of people using them increased or did it put them down as non-performing services and leave it at that?

I asked for some figures in a parliamentary question last November. Wait for it - I got the response from the NTA yesterday. We are talking about November, December, January and February - four months. One could not make it up. The figures were quite shocking. I had requested information about the additional funding allocated in budget 2019 for each of the CIÉ companies and Go-Ahead. It transpired that current expenditure is down at a time when rural transport is on its knees. The NTA's capital expenditure took a massive cut. In 2018, it was €9.2 million but it is down to €2.9 million. That is very serious. At a time when we should be focusing on increasing our public transport services, it turns out that budgets are being reduced. As we all know, Bus Éireann is the main provider so I cannot see how the NTA could explain that.

I asked also about funding allocated to Go-Ahead, which was awarded contracts to operate the subsidised bus services. The NTA spoke about reasons of commercial sensitivity but Go-Ahead's only competition is Bus Éireann and it is public money. There are serious questions to be answered in this regard. This is taxpayers' money that the NTA is using to subsidise a private company whose only competitor is our national bus service, Bus Éireann. We know how much money Bus Éireann receives. In fact, we know the NTA is reducing Bus Éireann's budget but the NTA will not tell us what it is giving to subsidise Go-Ahead. This is very serious stuff. It is unbelievable.