Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the team from the NTA for the reports. It is great to have the witnesses here. The NTA's remit includes developing an integrated transport system in the greater Dublin area. On Tuesday last, a report was published jointly by Kildare and Meath county councils on the experiences of commuters. This is an extensive piece of work on the experiences of commuters. The findings of the report are of major significance to the Government and statutory transport bodies such as the NTA because Kildare and Meath are the two counties within the greater Dublin area that have experienced the largest increases in population in the past two decades. Having served on a local authority for 17 years, I know that the explosion in population in certain areas is a direct consequence of national and regional policies on where population bases should be located. If a geographical area has experienced a population explosion, one would expect the Government and statutory body agencies to pursue policies to provide services in a range of areas, from education to healthcare to transport, especially given that these urbanised areas are a consequence of policy.

Some of the statistics from the report published on Tuesday made for interesting reading. More than 40% of commuters would take a pay cut to have a job closer to home, such is the hellish experience of their commute. The average journey time for people in these commuter counties is 70 minutes. The daily commute of 43% of respondents takes more than 90 minutes and for 12% of respondents it takes in excess of two hours to get into the city. A total of 53% of male commuters leave their homes before 7 a.m. This is an interesting statistic because the peak hour used in the NTA's Navan corridor study, which was part of its transport strategy for the greater Dublin area, was 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., whereas the report by the two local authorities found that 53% of male commuters and 45% of female commuters leave for work before 7 a.m., with 16% leaving before 6 a.m. The peak commuter hour in County Meath where I Iive, County Kildare where Deputy Murphy lives and County Louth where Deputy Munster lives is 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. People leave for work at that time because there are no viable alternatives. Anyone from my home town who is on the road later than 7 a.m. will have a two-hour commute. This has consequences for family life, social structures and mental health. Every day, 33,000 of my constituents commute to Dublin for work, the vast majority of them by private car. According to the study published on Tuesday, of the commuters who are lucky enough to be able to avail of public transport, 56% of those in County Kildare and 64% of those in County Meath were unhappy with the cost of the commute. Have the witnesses seen the results of the analysis published by the two local authorities on Tuesday? What are their thoughts on some of the statistics I cited on the duration and costs of commuting and the experiences of commuters?