Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party)

I welcome the witnesses here this morning. My time is a bit tight so I will ask a few questions. I will start with rural transport, although earlier I did not intend to start there. I am on the board of Local Link, so perhaps there is a conflict of interest. I am only a volunteer. I see the value of Local Link and rural transport for rural communities. We had the set-up of the business in Skibbereen. I refer to the Goleen, Schull and Ballydehob bus, as well as the bus from Beara to Sheep's Head in Bantry. The Baltimore to Skibbereen route is so popular that they have to get a bigger bus on the route because they cannot cope with the demand. These areas were never serviced before and all of a sudden they have exploded in the use of public transport.

There is a need for transport in other areas. I will email Mr. Creegan about the specific locations because he cannot be expected to know everywhere. Kinsale, Ballinhassig and Cork city do not have a service but there is a tender at the moment, which is great, but Clonakilty, Ballinacarrig and Drimoleague do not have any service whatsoever.

When Mr. Creegan talks about connecting Ireland, I am of the firm belief that the NTA should be in charge of school transport and should be in charge of everything in that regard. If we are going to connect Ireland, then all of the operators need to be working together. They might be working together from a distance but it needs to be under the one roof. I come in here in the mornings on the DART from Bray. The schoolchildren are going to school on the same DART, at any age and every age, on their own or with their parents or whatever. At the same time there is a school bus in rural Ireland travelling around the countryside that could bring an elderly person into the town to pick up the main rural transport and the Local Link bus and get them around that way. This is not happening at present. A is not talking to B.

I have so many questions to ask but my time is limited. If I am doing a return journey from Bray, it is 20 km in and 20 km return, so it is a 40 Km round trip that costs around €5.50 or €5.60, or very close to that - I could be wrong. If I was to do the same journey in rural Ireland it might be €15 or €20. That is not fair. Something has to change there. There should be no difference with the rates regardless of where one lives.

I have to move on pretty quickly. The NTA deals with fares and fare reductions. When the NTA announced a 20% fare reduction, this was not passed on to the commercial bus operators, CBOs. Why is that the case?