Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chair, welcome the witnesses and commend SIPTU on the survey. As the Acting Chair has said, it reflects what those of us who use public transport are seeing daily and I am sure it is even worse for some of the workers. From Sinn Féin's perspective, we support the need for a transport police and we welcome the Tánaiste coming out at the weekend in support of that. I suppose we need to hear from the other two Government parties and maybe some of them will join us in time today.

I wanted to get into some of the details of what the proposal is because I am particularly interested in getting people onto public transport from a climate perspective. That is the way to bring down our emissions but it is also a fantastic opportunity for older people with the free travel pass to have their independence if they no longer feel comfortable driving. The key thing is that people must feel comfortable and safe using public transport.

Equally, the night-time economy is dependent on people feeling safe to be able to get home on public transport. Could a SIPTU representative set out how they would see or envision a public transport police? How would it operate? Is there a best practice model because I am always convinced that we do not need to reinvent the wheel here when other cities are doing this? What would be the best model in SIPTU's experience? Maybe we can take that template if we can get agreement from the Government that this is actually necessary.