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

We were to get a late-night bus service on the Carraroe route in September and it will soon be March and we have still not had an announcement on it. I have fair justification in that respect. That is just one scheduling of a bus after 6 p.m. and we have not got it after all that time. It is a fair summation. We can come back in the autumn to see who is right but I do not foresee this new service being up and running before September. When it is up and running, it will go for six months and then there will be a review. I have seen the way everything works in this country. For a year or two, we will be as badly off as we are now except for the lucky dip of 34 small communities around the country.

It is a pervasive fact that one cannot be guaranteed a public service vehicle in rural Ireland when it is required. As close as six or seven miles away from Galway there could be plenty of hackney and taxi drivers but they all go to the city to work, so people cannot be sure of a service. This is the usual thing in rural Ireland, sop in áit na scuaibe; it means a straw instead of a brush, and we know how much a sop would do to sweep the floor.