Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)

I want to raise with the NTA the issue of public bus services to and from Ratoath via Ashbourne. There has been a very significant increase in population. There are high-frequency services but also a lot of cancellations, replacement buses and single-deckers when it should be double-deckers. There is a lot of congestion in the city so time is being made up by bypassing Ashbourne on some routes. The experience of service users is a very frustrating one. I should acknowledge that there has been some improvement in connection to the M3 Parkway, and I welcome those improvements.

I want to make the case again for more direct routes from Ratoath and Ashbourne to the city, with a greater mix of direct and indirect routes. That would be advantageous and would sort out a lot of the problems. There is definitely population demand and the geography lends itself to it. People can go directly from Ratoath via the Nine Milestone roundabout but there are only a very small number of direct services. I would make the case to the NTA to review this and to work towards having more direct routes from Ratoath and Ashbourne to and from Dublin, in particular given the service delivery needs and the increase in population.