Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is under constant review. It is about Exchequer funding and how best we could ensure that we are reducing the cost of transport for everybody on our public service obligation, PSO routes including our students. As the Deputy has said, it has been extended to 16 17 and 18-year-olds who are into full-time third level education. We want to continue this but it will depend on Exchequer funding. If we want to encourage people out of the cars we must ensure we continue these incentives on all public transport routes, be it bus or rail, right across the country, as well as the Connecting Ireland programme, which is about rural areas. Often when we talk about public transport, unfortunately people constantly think about urban areas and cities. This is about our rural towns and villages and making sure we can connect people right across the country as well.

I will now come back to the Chairman's question about the tolls. In December 2021, TII announced an increase in toll charges for eight toll roads for 2022. It must be noted that this is the first increase in tolls for motor cars since 2013. This increase was driven by inflation.