Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There is sometimes strength in holding one's counsel and I will have to do that in this case, if I can, for the moment. On the wider point, Deputy O'Rourke is right. I will go back to what I said about this moment as we come out of Covid-19. Hybrid working and working from home have become realities, which is a positive development for towns and suburbs around the country because people will increasingly be working, living and staying in what might previously have been a commuter town for Dublin, Cork, Galway or Limerick. Life will be brought back into those towns as people work from home, shop locally and so on. That is positive. However, it will lead to very changing transport patterns. The reality is we are going to have to adjust our public transport system to suit that.

We are still providing significant Covid supports this year, to the tune of over €200 million, as the Deputy said. One of the reasons we expect to fully utilise that money is that our public transport numbers, according to the National Transport Authority, NTA, to whom I spoke during the week, are still only approximately 60% of pre-Covid numbers. As we all know, the level of commuting is not back to anything like the level it was. Tourism numbers are not there and even the level of socialising is probably still below what it was historically. Our numbers are still down and the job is to get them back up. How can we do that? The youth travel card is one perfect way to do it because it is fundamental for those under 24 that we provide a 50% reduction in fares. It has taken some time, and will still take a number of weeks, to roll it out. We expect it before the end of April, initially on the PSO routes. They are much easier for us to administer and manage in this way because they are interoperable and fully accounted for, as it were. Commercial bus operations are useful and brilliant services but we do not set the prices for commercial bus operations. Those operators set their own prices and, understandably, the same accounting mechanisms do not apply to them as those which apply for PSO services. We are going to concentrate on the PSO routes first.

I will return to something I spoke to Deputy Duncan Smith about. My belief is that we need to look at some of the BusConnects measures, which are starting to be rolled out. Three more BusConnects routes in Dublin will be rolled out this year, two of which are already up and running. As soon as we get BusConnects through planning in different cities, I will be looking for political support in councils across the country to look at some of the elements that can be accelerated. There might be some instances, for example, where a bus gate could be put in. That does not mean any trees must be chopped down or anyone's front garden will have to be taken or any pavement has to be broken up. It may involve those areas where we can reorganise the traffic management system in this post-Covid time to give public transport a massive boost through more efficient timing, greater priority and so on. That does not require huge budget expense. It requires political commitment. To put a bus gate into Rathmines main street, to use an example from my constituency, does not cost anything. It is a traffic management measure and I will be looking to see are there examples such as that which we can accelerate ahead of what was originally planned. If we do not, what will happen is traffic volumes will increase to fill the road space and make it difficult for the public transport system to work. We are already seeing that happen. We need to give the system a leg-up and more than anything else, we can do that through the allocation of space.