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

Both urban and rural are centrally important. In rural public transport we have the potential to make a real leap. The distances travelled are often longer so if we are switching to lower-carbon transport fuel systems that could bring big reductions. We are also rolling out the BusConnects programme which has seen a really significant increase in public transport use in many rural areas. I think rural is as important as urban.

Making more space for public transport is a huge challenge. I often focus on that because it does not necessarily require a huge budget. I will give an example. Deputy Martin Kenny and I were in Sligo the week before last. He is up to speed with the proposals where there is consideration to go ahead with the S3, the third of the Sligo town bus routes. The first two are working very well and have been very successful. When I came back from Sligo I was asking questions about this and the key consideration of that as a roll-out is making decisions, which Sligo County Council will have to do, on giving priority for buses through the centre of the town and effectively reducing or taking the volume of traffic on some streets. That does not require a huge capital budget. It might often be signage rather than structural. That is an example of where, if we have the political commitment to reallocate space and make public transport work, then we can expand it. The big issue around finance is on the current side. I think we have €580 million public service obligation, PSO, this year. We would expect that even in the next year or two, with the expansion of new public transport services, that may go up to something like €800 million. That is from the current budget which was always much more difficult. Capital is an easier one to increase at the moment because it is one-off expenditure but current, by its nature, is recurring. That will be the big challenge. We have seen a huge increase in public transport in the last year. It is part driven by the 20% reduction in fares and the 50%, which works out in effect at a 60%, for those under 24 years. We will not reverse that, in my mind. I know some Members have been arguing we should go to free public transport but I have the issue of how we meet that €800 million call we will have in the coming years to support public transport. Most Deputies will agree that we should continue to expand the offer. We will continue to roll out Connecting Ireland. As those projects become full-year service payments, that will have a big cost call but I think it is right to put the money into the current side to support PSOs. Many of the capital projects can be done at relatively low cost to promote bus services with the kinds of measures such as that in Sligo town where it is about taking out some of the through traffic in the town centre.