Mr. John Nott:

I know the Deputy and I have met before and discussed some of the issues in Galway so I will not rehash the answers to some of those.

As the Deputy will be aware, a review of the area is under way and proposals are coming through. We expect three or four new proposals to come in for Galway in the next few months. One that is imminent along the 350 route is Mountbellew. We have a programme, as we mentioned, of approximately 47 proposals to work through in phase 4 of the Connecting Ireland programme. It is important to mention that it is a five-phase programme. We are committed to and prioritising getting to the end of it. By the end, we will probably have worked through between 200 and 250 new and enhanced routes across the network. We have seen approximately a sevenfold increase in passenger numbers on the Local Link regular rural services, which is phenomenal. There are challenges around how we can provide capacity for that and how the market can respond to deliver buses, drivers and so forth. One of the things that is less spoken about is that we have had a significant increase in services across the regional network served by Bus Éireann. Last year, for example, approximately 8 million passenger journeys were taken on services that were enhanced or brought about by the Connecting Ireland programme. We have had phenomenal growth. The challenge is trying to keep up with that.