Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentation. I come from a rural constituency, namely, Sligo-Leitrim. To follow up on the Leas-Chathaoirleach's remarks on one-off rural housing, I live in a rural parish. We do not have a town. We have a small school, which was a three-teacher school five years ago, is now a two-teacher school, and will close in another five years, because we have an awful problem with rural depopulation. The next parish is Drumreilly, which has the same problem. The next parish after that is Gortletteragh, which has the same problem. While I understand that we need to have space for people to live in towns where they can have access to public transport, which we need to see happen, the towns in most areas of rural south Leitrim do not have public transport. Even if a person lives in one of those towns, he or she still needs a car. That is the reality. We need to look at this as a big picture. The big picture is that we have to get it right.

Regarding public transport, particularly in Dublin, Ms Donnelly mentioned the reduction in fares. When I get in the car to drive to Dublin, it costs about €10 per 100 km for fuel. A round trip of 150 km costs €30. If I get on the train, it costs me almost the same. That should not be the case. It should cost me less than half what it costs me to put fuel in the car if we are going in the right direction. That is just one example. It is similar for many people who live in Dublin and other urban areas. There is a public transport system but it is quite unreliable. My son has been living here for more than a year. He tells me that he goes to wait for the bus and the sign states it will be there in three minutes, then it changes to nine minutes, then back to three minutes. Twenty minutes later, he says, "To hell with this" and starts walking. Many people standing at the bus stops are saying the same.

One issue is that we have a population who have taken this on and want to do the right thing. Unfortunately, when they look to the right thing to do, they find that the service is not there for them. It might be the train from a rural area such as where I come from. When it costs as much to travel on the train as in the car, and three people can travel in the car, three people will not buy a train ticket for that price. That needs to be acknowledged. I am hesitant about free public transport. We need to be careful of that. People do not appreciate something if they do not have to pay for it. A cost-benefit analysis is needed to see where the sweet spot is in order that the price is right to attract more people to use the service and make it as viable as possible. We have to bite the bullet and recognise that we will have to subsidise many of these services to get people to use them. I would be interested in Ms Donnelly's comments on that.

The other issue I wanted to mention relates to EVs and charging points. Two times over the past number of years, I trialled electric cars. One problem I got was that when I got on the motorway and headed to Dublin, the on-board computer told me to do 400 km then get a charge. I quickly realised that it would hardly do 200 km when driving at speed and trying to get to the destination as one normally would in a normal car. There needs to be recognition that many people who are buying EVs are living in the cities and towns. The people who really need them, who are making longer journeys and are covering more kilometres are the people who live in rural areas. They are extremely expensive. For the vast majority of people on the average wage, to say they will have to spend €50,000 more on a car is simply way out of their reach. That is a big issue. Second-hand EVs have not come on the market yet.