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

If I may make one more point, which has regard to a bright light on the horizon, as the Deputy will know better than anyone else, it is not just about Connecting Ireland, but the town services. The NTA tells me that the numbers in Navan are just spectacular since the town bus services were improved and increased in number. The public in Navan is responding at scale. There is a tremendous volume of interest. It is not just about Connecting Ireland. What has happened in this country in the last year is really interesting. We are outside the norm. Most other comparator countries have not seen a return to public transport. As the figures announced yesterday by the NTA show, we have. We are back to pre-Covid levels. We are an outlier in that. We are very unusual. There are no similar examples among advanced and developed western countries. This is because of a combination of new services, 20% lower fares and the political commitment behind all of this. Everyone knows that we are committed to really pushing out buses in the next two to three years.