Mr. Hugh Creegan:

It is important to say there are a lot of good things in the fare changes that we introduced, but I accept that there are people who have been disadvantaged. I acknowledge that upfront. We had a fare system before that people continually complained about. There was a big jump at the end of the short-hop zone when one came into intercity fares. If you were in Balbriggan, you paid one fare and if you were in Gormanston it was €7 more to get on, even though it is only 2 km or 3 km up the road. That was replicated across the system. The same happened on the Kildare line where there was a big ramp up at Newbridge Station and so on. For years, people were asking us to sort this out. It was a legacy fare system that dates back decades. It is very hard to understand what rationale they had on things like competition with private operators, when those fares were introduced years ago. Nobody knows why it happened.

What we have done now is put in a very rational, logical fare system. A lot of people have benefited and some people have had their fares increased, but it is now fairly based for people who are the same distance from the city centre. They all pay the same fare. I heard what Deputy Boland said about other journeys. That is the case whether one lives on the east, south or west side of the city. It was not the case before.

We want to do more on child fares because Deputy Boland is correct that they have gone up quite significantly. Our target is that by the next academic year – September – we will have a lower price weekly child fare in place that will hopefully address a significant level of the concerns that exist about the current structure.

We must check the feasibility of the ticketing system, which is quite old - the current system we have goes back 20 years – to see about introducing interzonal fares. Deputy Boland referred to going from zone 2 to zone 3. We are working on the feasibility of that. I do not know the answer to it yet.

I assure Deputy Boland that we are going to introduce a lower price weekly child fare. We have a target of September to get that done.