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

There were 65 new and enhanced routes last year. Some of the routes were enhanced with new services and additional frequency. There are also a significant number of new routes, which have been hugely successful. There has been a roughly 115% increase in patronage year on year. There are 280,000 people with new and enhanced bus services and it is intended to further expand that. It was started as a five-year programme, so we are halfway through it. There may not be the exact same number of new and enhanced services as were introduced last year, which really was exceptional but, yes, the proposal is to continue to expand and deliver. The real constraints in this regard will be with the budget and the availability of drivers. The budget is an issue across all our public service operations.

I thought the briefing document was very useful, in that it provides a very good summary. It shows on the current budget that we are winding down some of the non-core measures. During the height of the Covid pandemic, we had to provide more than €1 billion, when we include core and non-core, in public transport support to get through it. That figure of non-core, in other words, emergency support, has reduced to about €154 million this year and will have to decrease again next year. This presents a real challenge for us as to how we meet the current expenditure support for the public service obligation in particular, because that is the largest current component. We have a real challenge to do so and to maintain some of the fare reductions which have been introduced in the last two years.