Ms Anne Graham:

I thank the Deputy for her observations. She raised several issues. We will probably not be able to address them all today but we will certainly come back to her on them.

In general, she mentioned a local area hackney licence. We are obliged to follow what the legislation sets out on how to determine whether a local area hackney licence will be put in place. It is safe to say that we do not receive huge numbers of applications. We have put in place a pilot subsidised local area hackney in some locations to try to encourage more local area hackneys in rural areas. When we get to the end of that pilot, we would like to review the entirety of local area hackney licence provision to see whether other changes need to be made in the primary legislation or in our regulations to be more successful in getting more local area hackneys out into rural areas. Hackneys offer a possibility, especially for those who do not have their own transport, to cover the last mile in rural Ireland, which we will never be able to cover with a bus service. We are conscious of it. We operate within the legislation and regulations. Now that we have gone through the Covid-19 pandemic, we have tried this pilot. We will see what the results are. It now time for us to review the legislation and regulations with the Department to see what more we can do to get more of that service in place.

In Carlow, we are delighted with the success and the number of people using the bus service.