Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Before we conclude, I want to ask Ms Graham about bus shelters. While it sounds like a small issue, I have engaged with Ms Graham on this many times over the past 11 years and although some progress has been made, it is terribly slow. I have a couple of things to note, one of which is they cost a lot of money. I have observed two things. First, some of the areas that we have put forward do not require a big bus shelter. In Monasterevin, the NTA put in a big one. It was right because there were more people at the bus stop than at the train station and it needed a big bus shelter.

Portlaoise could do with a second one, particularly on the upper-bound line. I ask Ms Graham to examine that. There is a very small one at Lyster Square, opposite the shopping centre in Portlaoise. That needs to be bigger.

I would like to focus on the route along the R445 through Borris-in-Ossory, Castletown, Mountrath, Portlaoise and Ballybrittas for a moment. There are no bus shelters along it. Bus shelters have been promised. Can we look at ones that are less expensive? I argue strongly that Borris-in-Ossory needs one. There is room on the street as there is a wide main street, which has been bypassed. We can make better use of what is there. Could Ms Graham come back to me on what is happening on that?

When one is standing on the road in Castletown waiting for a bus, cars or trucks pass at high speed. On a wet day or on a wet morning, when people are going to work and children are going to school, they are wet before they even get there. We need to try to provide a small bus shelter there. In Mountrath, there may be problems with footpath widths. However, the local authority needs to be given latitude around Patrick Street, Mountrath. It is a wide street and the parking bays have been built out in order to designate the parking spaces. This means that there is street space on Patrick Street. Portlaoise needs a second one on Lyster Square and Ballybrittas needs a bus shelter. Again, it does not need one as big as those in the larger towns. It does not need one as big as in Monasterevin.

On the N78 route, bus shelters are needed at Crettyard, Newtown and Ballylynan. Again, small ones would do in Crettyard and Newtown. There is loads of space for them. At Ballylynan there is a wide street with build-outs to designate the parking areas. I was in Ballylynan on Saturday and there are locations there for bus shelters. The weather has been dry for the last two weeks, but there was a week when it rained all week. We want to get people onto public transport but we live in a country with a wet climate where we get intensive periods of heavy rain.

I forgot to mention Kilminchy. There is supposed to be a bus shelter on each side of the road there. Kilminchy alone has over 1,000 people living in it. There are a couple of thousand more people living around that end of Portlaoise. It urgently needs a bus shelter on each side of the road there. Again, there is space. If we are going to get people to use public transport, we have to provide that. I ask that a smaller model of bus shelter be looked at. I have seen big ones going up in areas where there are generally one or two people using it. I want to see that figure increasing, as I am sure Ms Graham does, to six, seven or eight people, in order to get people out of cars. However, people will not get out of the car on a wet day to stand on the side of a road, or leave the car at home or forget about the car altogether to use public transport unless we have that vital infrastructure. I do not expect Ms Graham to come back to me with all of the details in an answer. However, perhaps she could come back to me on each one of those.

To conclude, the local authorities under the bus legislation that was brought in eight years ago were given greater role in respect of bus stops. This is for the Department to take on board as well. Local authorities need to be the bodies that designate them, put them up and put them in place. I mean no disrespect to the witnesses but cannot be co-ordinated from their office. The NTA cannot be sorting out bus stops in Castletown, Crettyard and places like that. That needs to happen locally, with the municipal districts of the council, with the councillors and with the engineers. Of course, the NTA designates the bus routes, and I am not arguing against that. However, that needs to be devolved down. While I understand that the NTA must operate within the legislation that is there, can you give any slack to the local authorities to allow them do as much as they can? I would argue for that. Would Ms Graham like to respond briefly on that point?