Mr. Seamus Boland:

We agree 100% with the Senator on the PR and the need to bring services to the public's attention. In a sense, Local Link, mainly through the campaign - we were talking about Marty Morrissey at one stage - has done that a great deal. However, as Mr. Gaston rightly says, there are some issues. They are almost issues of success. The members of Irish Rural Link would say one of the frustrating things is, if you do not know the area well, you do not know where the bus is going from because there is no visibility on the bus stop. We ask the local authorities, the NTA and all the various agencies involved to work a lot more closely on this one. The Senator talked about modal shift. If we want to reframe the thinking, bus stops should not be based on the old Bus Éireann model. They were in a different era, almost. We need to think rural. Telling somebody to stand at that place near Daly's Cross and so on is not good enough today. We argue strongly the local authorities have a big role in this area and need to step up to it. Visibility in a rural area is important. We can have all the advertisements we like.

If I am passing by and I am thinking, because I am approaching that age, maybe I will use the bus instead then I will wonder where can the bus collect me and then the idea will go out of my mind but not if I see a bus stop. We think that there is a lot of work to be done in this area.