Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)

The other important point mentioned is public acceptance and buy-in. Most of my experience of public transport is in my constituency, so I will make my point in that context. My constituency has the DART, commuter trains and rural transport. It covers all of the remit. One of the biggest problems is not that people do not want to use public transport but that the service is either not there or is so poor they cannot rely on it. That is the challenge. It is about the operation of the service in many instances. We have buses repeatedly not showing up, timetables that are all over the place and an absence services that people have been seeking for years. I have spoken to the witnesses many times about the electric DART to Wicklow town. There is no bus between Wicklow town and Greystones and they are 20 minutes from each other. Greystones has the DART and Wicklow town gets three services to Dublin every day. The infrastructure and the service are just not there. I do not know where the impediment is. Is it that the Government is not funding it? Is it the prioritisation of where services go? Drogheda and Portlaoise have fantastic train services. Portlaoise has 32 train services every day, Drogheda has 16 and Wicklow town has six. It seems that good services are being made very good at the expense of really poor services, such as Wicklow town. Is there a prioritisation issue?