Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Apologies have been received from the Cathaoirleach, Deputy Naughten.

Members participating in the meeting remotely are required to do so from within the Leinster House complex only. I ask members and witnesses to please turn off their mobile phones or ensure that they are on silent mode. Members of the committee participating remotely are asked to use the raise-hand function on Microsoft Teams, if they wish to contribute.

The provision of rural public transport, which we are here this morning to discuss, is a significant priority for this joint committee. Our work programme on the topic includes the following items: progress in the Connecting Ireland programme; issues of transport deprivation and forced car ownership in rural communities; challenges facing Local Link services in increasing provision; integration and co-ordination of public transport services; barriers to active transport in rural areas; considering the every village, every hour mode,l which pertains in other jurisdictions; and the provision of supporting infrastructure such as bikes and bus shelters.

Local Link transport services provide an important service to the rural communities which they serve. Transport for Ireland, TFI, Local Link focuses on responding to rural isolation, and enhancing the mobility, accessibility and community participation of local people, particularly those at risk of social exclusion.

The national rural development policy entitled Our Rural Future recognises that people living in rural areas should have access to good quality public services that enable them to continue to live sustainably in rural communities and help them to maintain a good quality of life. If we are to fulfil our climate action goals and our sustainable development obligations, it is clear that we need a reliable, green, integrated rural public transport system which reaches as many people as possible.

It is well worth acknowledging some of the positives we have seen in recent years. For instance,107 new rural bus routes have been established over the last 104 weeks, which is more than a bus route per week. We know that post Covid-19, Ireland has bucked the trend internationally in terms of the numbers of people availing of public transport use, with numbers not just recovering, but exceeding pre-Covid-19 levels. I note that is particularly apparent in some of our rural bus services.

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the reductions in public transport fares. When so much else was increasing in price, our public transport fares decreased by 20% across the board, with young people enjoying that 50% reduction. With advances like ticket technology including the TFI Leap card being rolled out increasingly on Local Link services, that is now allowing users of rural bus services to avail of these discounted fares.

To discuss these matters, among others, I welcome to the meeting today representatives from Irish Rural Link, namely, Mr. Seamus Boland, Ms Miriam McKenna and Mr. Alan Kerry; and from the National Transport Authority, NTA, namely, Ms Anne Graham, CEO, Mr. Tim Gaston, director of public transport services, and Ms Bláthín McElligott, Local Link programme manager.

Before we start, I wish to explain some of the limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses with regard to references members or witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who wish to give evidence from within the parliamentary precinct is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory regarding an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks, and it is imperative that they comply with any such direction. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

With those pieces of housekeeping out of the way, I now call on Mr. Seamus Boland to make his opening statement.

Mr. Seamus Boland:

On behalf of the board of Irish Rural Link, IRL, I thank the committee and the Cathaoirleach for the invitation to the meeting, which we were glad to accept. I wish to introduce Ms Miriam McKenna, who is a member of our board and manager and director of the Flexibus programme. I also introduce Mr. Alan Kerry, who is also a member of the Irish Rural Link board. He also runs the Local Link service in Kildare.

I hope members have received a copy of my statement. Irish Rural Link has been a key supporter and advocate of rural transport since the establishment of the rural transport initiative in 1998. Since the establishment phase, IRL has contributed in a collaborative manner to supporting both policy and operational progression to ensure transport in rural Ireland has continued to be a key output in governmental decisions pertaining to both transport and rural development.

The board of IRL and the organisation as a whole has had a particular rural transport focus since it was founded 1991, with representation then secured from Flexibus, an independent company limited by guarantee that is managed by Ms McKenna. The Local Link network, the representative body of the 15 organisations currently providing transport functions, has had a seat on the IRL board since 2015.

As an organisation, IRL recognises the contribution that transport makes in ensuring vibrant and sustainable communities. In November 2000, the report of the interdepartmental working group on rural transport stated that while important individual initiatives were progressing, rural transport at the time lacked a fully integrated national approach. It also stated there was already wide consensus about the existence of a rural transport problem but neither the full nature or scale had been systematically quantified and the overall direction of policy needed to address it had not yet been fully articulated. That was a report from 2000, which we note.

We acknowledge the improvements that have been achieved since then in the delivery of public transport in rural Ireland, particularly the integrated national approach that has recently been seen through the ongoing roll-out of the Connecting Ireland programme. However, we would also advise that IRL will continue its role in ensuring that this roll-out realises its full potential and effects change in as many rural communities as possible. We have some distance to go.

This approach is consistent with the strategy, Our Rural Future for the period 2021 to 2025, which is the national rural development programme. IRL has always wanted a consistency of programmes to apply. We believe this will require the continuation of innovative solutions that will build on the initial successes of the rural transport initiative where demand-responsive transport played a key role in delivering rural solutions. That is an approach we believe, if implemented appropriately, will play a key part in ensuring that those living outside of settlements in rural areas can also benefit from the expansion of regular rural bus services currently being planned and developed under the Connecting Ireland programme.

Currently, 15 independent organisations are operating as companies limited by guarantee. That is the situation in Local Link. Working as not-for-profit entities allows them to deliver transport co-ordination unit, TCU, functions on behalf of the Department of Transport and managed by the National Transport Authority, NTA. It is worth saying, as we have many times before, that the involvement of the NTA has been a game changer in progressing that policy. The current structure provides an example of a ground-up approach, supported by Departments and a national agency, which, through co-operation at various levels, have contributed to exponential growth in the number of people availing of and using public transport in rural areas.

In line with the Government's sustainable mobility objectives, the period 2018 to 2022 saw substantial growth in the delivery of public transport in rural areas under the TFI Local Link brand and the rural transport programme. This period has experienced a substantial widening in the demographic of the Irish population who now avail of public transport in rural areas. Services are now facilitating older people, younger people, second- and third-level students, workers and tourists. An overall holistic approach is something for which we have advocated for many years.

Between 2018 and 2022, the number of regular rural services delivered has increased by 205.9%, from 34 to 104. An extra 61 new services are planned for 2023. If delivered, this would represent an increase of 385% in the number of regular services delivered between 2018 and 2023. In 2018, there were just seven regular rural services operating seven days per week, accounting for 20.6% of total services. In 2022, there were 62 regular rural services operating seven days per week, accounting for almost 60% of total services. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of regular rural services operating seven days per week increased by more than 700%.

We would also like to address climate action. In its National Sustainable Mobility Policy Action Plan 2022-2025, the Department of Transport outlined its vision for the future of transport in Ireland. The plan sets out a strategic framework to 2030 for active travel and public transport to support Ireland’s overall international obligation to achieve a 51% reduction in carbon emissions. IRL is keen to ensure that members of the rural population are assisted to provide them with the opportunity to remove themselves from car dependency and, in turn, play their part in protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is a situation that we recognise presents unique challenges in rural areas and we again offer ourselves as willing contributors to finding unique solutions in this area.

In addition to climate action, we in IRL believe that our organisation has key values and goals. We must endeavour to advocate for transport and mobility solutions that are inclusive and apply to all members of our society.

IRL is aware and mindful of the fact that the functions pertaining to local transport co-ordination are currently procured on cyclical four-year terms. IRL is also aware that the companies, that is, the TCUs, currently providing these functions are operating on one-year extensions to contracts. Consideration should now be given by all Members of the Houses to ensuring the platform for these functions are strong enough to maintain the proposed expansion in services over the coming years. The challenges presented by four-year terms do not support continuous professional development for staff or allow the foundation to ensure that the appropriate capacity or skills are supported and developed to address the many new challenges that are presented by climate action or the progression of the rural mobility plan.

Challenges are currently being experienced because of the contraction of the availability of local private bus operators to deliver the expansion of local bus services. It is no surprise that operators are being challenged by the lack of availability of vehicles and suitably qualified and experienced bus drivers. That is a problem throughout the transport system. The above issues have been exacerbated to an extent due to Brexit, which has affected the availability of vehicles and replacement parts.

I will turn to consider the continuation and expansion of services pertaining to older people and people with disabilities in rural areas. Rural transport since its inception has been about meeting the needs of people with disabilities and people who lack mobility. That means accessible vehicles must be supported by accessible infrastructure. We would respectfully ask this committee to work with our organisation to ensure that appropriate infrastructure, including at a minimum bus stops, are planned for and provided.

As was pointed out in our own discussions, visibility is everything. If people see bus stops in a rural area, then they know there is a rural bus service. If people do not see them - in some cases, they do not exist - then they do not think there is a rural service. This is an important point.

We thank the committee for its invitation. We are fully aware that, as a committee and individually, its members have worked hard in different guises on the road to providing a proper rural integrated transport service. I will say upfront that my colleagues present are much more expert than I am, but we will take members' questions. We are here to work with all of the committee's members to ensure the success we are now having in Local Link is built upon for the next stage.

Ms Anne Graham:

I thank the committee for its invitation. I understand it wishes to focus on the topic of Local Link services. To assist me in dealing with its subsequent questions, I am joined by Mr. Tim Gaston, director of public transport services, and Ms Bláthín McElligott, rural transport manager with the authority.

Before dealing with the specific areas of focus, I wish to provide an overview of developments in the TFI Local Link rural transport programme. The objective of the rural transport programme is to provide a good-quality, nationwide, community-based public transport system in rural Ireland that responds to local needs. TFI Local Link bus services connect communities throughout rural Ireland as part of the Transport for Ireland, TFI, network. TFI Local Link operates two types of services: regular rural services, RRS, which operate on fixed routes between towns and villages and run on scheduled timetables, and demand-responsive transport, DRT, services, which operate along the same routes with the option to divert to collect and drop off passengers at their homes, with frequencies ranging from once per week to daily. These services are managed and administrated by 15 transport co-ordination units, TCUs, or Local Link offices nationwide.

In early 2022 as the pandemic-related travel restrictions eased, passenger numbers on TFI Local Link RRS routes returned almost immediately to pre-pandemic levels. The roll-out of the Connecting Ireland plan, along with other factors I will list, saw passenger numbers continue to increase at an unprecedented level, a level that still continues into 2023. During 2022, TFI Local Link services carried a total of 2.8 million passengers, consisting of 1.8 million passengers on RRS routes and 1 million on DRT services. The factors for the growth in public transport include Connecting Ireland, which is developing new and enhanced routes for the TFI Local Link network; a reduction in the cost of fares by 20% as a cost-of-living measure, with the young adult card seeing a further 50% reduction in fares as well as cheaper TFI Leap and TFI Go fares; and ticket technologies, with TFI Local Link recently expanding its fare payment options to allow passengers on RRS services to pay for travel with their TFI Leap cards or on the TFI Go app, offering passengers a more convenient way to pay and savings of up to 30% on cash fares.

The Connecting Ireland rural mobility plan is an initiative by the National Transport Authority, NTA, to improve connectivity and mobility in rural areas through the development of new and enhanced public transport services. The plan is to provide a minimum level of services per day, seven days per week. In many cases, we are providing services with higher than the minimum frequency based on demand, population and the services that are provided in the towns being served. These services are planned to integrate with regional bus and rail services.

In phase 1, which was delivered in 2022, 38 new and enhanced bus services were introduced as part of Connecting Ireland. More than 110,000 weekly vehicle kilometres were added to the public transport network, with 13 brand new services, 16 frequency enhancements and nine route extensions. More than 50 settlements have improved connectivity due to the expansion of our public transport network. These have been implemented on our behalf by Bus Éireann and our Local Link offices. Connecting Ireland services continue to see an increase in patronage - up 112% at the end of 2022 compared with the beginning of 2019. Where Connecting Ireland services have been implemented, patronage increased by 128% between the beginning of 2022 and the year's end. The Connecting Ireland phase 1 report is available on the NTA's website.

We are now working actively with our delivery partners to deliver phase 2 of the plan this year, with 67 new routes planned for implementation across Ireland. The authority is also seeking to pilot the delivery of a small number of app-based demand-responsive bus services.

Regarding the co-ordination of services, in exercising its functions, the authority seeks to achieve the provision of an integrated public transport system of services and networks for all users. Wherever appropriate, we seek to integrate and co-ordinate services to provide for seamless travel options where change of bus and-or mode is required. This includes the operation of rural transport services, which can facilitate connecting to mainline interurban services irrespective of the provider of those services. In fact, the NTA is the only body that can bring modes and operators together in an integrated service pattern that provides the best service for rural communities.

Regarding rural taxis, the NTA recognises that public bus transport cannot meet the travel demands of many people in rural Ireland, either because it is not available at all or it is not available at the time needed. Taxis and hackneys play an important role in meeting the travel demand when public transport is not available. However, it is recognised there are many gaps in the provision of taxis and hackneys in many rural communities. The report of the Taxi Regulation Review, published by the Government in January 2012, recommended the introduction of a local area hackney licence to address transport deficits that would not otherwise be addressed in certain rural areas. Regulations permitting the issuing of such licences were introduced with effect from December 2013 to enable a part-time hackney service to be provided in, generally, rural areas that were likely to be too small to support a full-time taxi or hackney operation and that were too far from adjacent centres to be serviced by taxis or hackneys from those centres. However, there is a very low uptake of local area hackneys, primarily due to the cost of insurance.

In response to this, the NTA has undertaken to simplify the administration involved in the local area hackney application process, to pilot a small number of local area hackney services that will receive grant aid in areas that have no hackney or taxi service operating currently, and to pilot a small number of community transport services that will receive grant aid in areas that have no hackney or taxi service operating currently. The pilot local area hackney scheme, which was launched at the start of 2023, will enable the NTA to test this operational model. It will better allow us to estimate the cost of delivering this type of grant aid. The pilot scheme has to be carefully managed so that it does not undermine existing licensed taxi and hackney operators in rural areas. A small number of applications for grant aid have completed the process and are now moving through the licensing process.

The work the NTA is doing in expanding rural public transport services and local area hackney and community transport services will go a long way in meeting the travel demand in isolated rural communities.

This concludes my introductory presentation. I trust that we can answer any queries that arise.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank the witnesses for their opening statements. It is the stated intention of the Cathaoirleach, Deputy Naughten, that these rural transport services be considered further in the coming year. Public meetings may be held with Local Link providers and with groups that have experienced difficulties with isolated patients in rural areas accessing appointments in regional hospitals.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I put it on my agenda to attend this meeting because I feel so strongly about the important role rural transport plays in rural development. I do not know whether the witnesses have appeared before this committee previously. Perhaps Mr. Boland or someone else from Irish Rural Link has.

I live 5 km from the closest village and 17 km from the closest town. I am a member of the Green Party and there is this notion that we all live in Dublin and cycle everywhere, but I am more aware than most of what it is like to live in a rural area. Last summer, I had the misfortune of breaking my leg. I was unable to drive, so I could not go anywhere.

Local Link has to be praised. It is an amazing service that goes where the public service operator, Bus Éireann, and public service obligation, PSO, service providers do not or have never gone. It is an important service.

In Clare, Local Link services have increased, but we associate them with being for people with disabilities and old people only, so the public relations, PR, piece is missing at a local scale, albeit not at a national scale. I would like to see Local Link being provided funding to promote its services locally. For example, many people in rural areas do not know about Leap cards. It was not too long ago that I discovered I could use a Leap card outside Dublin. There is one place in the entire county of Clare where you can buy a Local Link card. We are not all online and we do not all know about apps, especially people who do not have cars. Those who do have cars know nothing about it either because they have never needed to look into it. I only discovered recently that, if I drive or cycle to my local village, I can then hop on a bus with my Leap card and it will cost me €3 to get to Ennis, whereas previously it was €5.50. It is a great service, but we are missing the PR piece.

I have met Mr. Boland several times. As he said, if there is no bus pole or no Leap card sticker saying a shop sells or updates Leap cards, as can be seen all over Dublin and other cities, the possibility does not cross your mind.

We have to get rural people thinking differently. We all drive everywhere, including me, and now we are responsible for half the carbon emissions. We must halve transport carbon emissions, and if we do not take rural dwellers' choices seriously, we are not going to reach those targets. Unfortunately, around 1.4 million people live outside villages and towns, which means we are responsible for quite a lot of the carbon emissions from cars. What is the vision from the NTA around that? I ask because I do not see any bus stop poles going up anywhere there are existing official bus stops. I do not buy into the narrative we need a lay-by, a footpath and lights, because that is not best practice in other parts of the world. The stops are put where there is a line of sight, then the bus stops and the cars just wait. Until we accept that as a normal thing for car drivers to have to do, we are going nowhere with rural transport. Accordingly, we need to see the poles put back where the official bus stops are as a first step.

The second point is about timetables. I have been saying for four years that all over north Clare we have rural bus stops with timetables that are four years old. I am sure it is the same in other counties. This is not rocket science. Those stops must be updated with current timetables. The third point is about frequency. Frequency is brilliant, but the last bus out of most county towns is at 6.30 p.m. or 7.30 p.m. and therefore our county towns are dead at night because everybody has to leave. If we even had one night with a service that got people into town at 6 p.m. and returned at 10 p.m. or even 1 a.m., it would allow loads of rural people to go into urban areas to the cinema, a meal or whatever. Our towns are drained at night because there is no way of getting in and out.

I am asking for everything here because if we want to halve our carbon emissions we need everything. The spend on investment in rural transport should be just as great as it is in Dublin and so on because we are doing a lot of the driving but we need choices. On that, it is great we have new PSO bus services, but now we cannot bring bikes on buses. That is a pity because in other jurisdictions people with disabilities are enabled to travel on a bus along with cyclists, so I do not want to hear the response that the buses had to be lowered for people with disabilities and is that not what we want, because of course I want that. Mr. Boland mentioned an integrated service. What part does cycling play in that? What about Irish Rail not being involved in Connecting Ireland? I did some research into this and found that 16 times a day a bus comes into Ennis station five minutes after the train leaves. I met the CEO of Irish Rail and he was not consulted about this at all. Are we ever going to get all the public transport people into one room to finally connect Ireland? I was sure that is what Connecting Ireland was all about.

It is easy for me to throw mud at our guests, but we have come a long way in the past two and a half years and I do not want to be entirely negative. We have done a lot, but we still have an awful lot more to do if we are serious about rural transport. I got a bus shelter in my village a few weeks ago and we nearly hit a bottle of champagne off it. We thought it was amazing. There are ten bus shelters in the county. There are no standards, so it is haphazard. Every local authority is different. The Bus Éireann people say local authorities must request the bus stops, but the local authorities say it is up to Bus Éireann. Then it is the NTA, then it is TFI and then TII. It is always very complicated to find out who is responsible for what. I have been trying to get a bus stop in Doolin for four and half years. I finally got the Clare County Council engineer and a Bus Éireann guy at the same spot at the same time in Doolin and thought that would be it at last after four years. Now he has to go off to somebody in the NTA about something else and who knows when it will actually happen.

I will finish by saying if we do not do proper PR, people will not know. I say all the time I am doing PR for the bus companies. I am going around printing bus timetables for Local Link and Bus Éireann and laminating them, giving them to people, sticking them in shop windows and giving them to older people's groups so their members know. It is great I can now get a bus from my village seven times a day, but people do not know. There is no point in having something great if people are not aware of it. I would love to know the NTA's vision for rural bus stops. We must have a way of stopping the bus without having to get to a town or village. It is about where it is safe to do so. All that is needed is a line of sight. That is what is done in France, Germany, Holland and other places. I do not want to be told by anybody it can only be done if we can make a lay-by. We will have a huge song and dance about it and it will never happen. If the car drivers can see the bus and they know there is a stop there, then they get used to it. That is what we have to move towards.

Ms Anne Graham:

Obviously we recognise we still have a lot of work to do. There is a lot of work to do on bus stops and information. We provide funding and support doing marketing of our Local Link services. The Senator has raised this with us before and we will certainly have a look. We know Local Link is well known because we do our own research. The brand is very well known and that has been increasing over recent years. Visibility is all and the Senator is right that it is not just about visibility of the bus but also of the bus stop and information. Mr. Gaston might address the bus stop pole issue.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

The Senator is spot on that we are playing catch-up. There is a deficit of infrastructure, bus stops and appropriate bus stops across rural Ireland. It is not straightforward. We do not look for a lay-by at every location because then we would be getting into land purchase and all sorts of issues. On the other hand, we must be cognisant of the safety aspects of this as well. The NTA produced a guidance note for local authorities some years ago. It was around the time the responsibility for signing off on the location of bus stops moved from the Garda to the local authorities. There are, therefore, a number of parties involved. We involve the local authorities, and we have to. It is appropriate to do so when deciding where we want to put the poles. We work with the operators, including Local Link, to ensure the location best serves the local people using the buses. Then we put that pole and some hard standing in place, engage a contractor to do so, or look to the local authority to do that. We have had some success in the past 12 months or so because we had significant funding coming in that direction and we have now started a national programme. However, there are something in the order of 15,000 bus stops nationally and we have addressed somewhere in the order of 1,000 of them in the last while. That is not fast enough and we need to find ways to speed that up. At the minute we are in the middle of putting together a new programme where, jointly with the local authorities, we will identify where bus poles are needed and speed up the roll out.

At the same time, the information on the bus pole is important, because, as the Senator said, not everybody has the app or access to TFI live information on the websites and so on. We usually take a service level agreement with Bus Éireann to maintain the information on those bus poles, because many of them are shared between it and Local Link or maybe private operators. We look to Bus Éireann and contract it to maintain the information on those carousels because timetables change as things need to be adjusted. There is, therefore, a programme, but I cannot suggest for a minute that rural Ireland has fantastic bus infrastructure because it does not and we fully recognise we are playing catch-up.

Mr. Seamus Boland:

We agree 100% with the Senator on the PR and the need to bring services to the public's attention. In a sense, Local Link, mainly through the campaign - we were talking about Marty Morrissey at one stage - has done that a great deal. However, as Mr. Gaston rightly says, there are some issues. They are almost issues of success. The members of Irish Rural Link would say one of the frustrating things is, if you do not know the area well, you do not know where the bus is going from because there is no visibility on the bus stop. We ask the local authorities, the NTA and all the various agencies involved to work a lot more closely on this one. The Senator talked about modal shift. If we want to reframe the thinking, bus stops should not be based on the old Bus Éireann model. They were in a different era, almost. We need to think rural. Telling somebody to stand at that place near Daly's Cross and so on is not good enough today. We argue strongly the local authorities have a big role in this area and need to step up to it. Visibility in a rural area is important. We can have all the advertisements we like.

If I am passing by and I am thinking, because I am approaching that age, maybe I will use the bus instead then I will wonder where can the bus collect me and then the idea will go out of my mind but not if I see a bus stop. We think that there is a lot of work to be done in this area.

Ms Anne Graham:

Senator Garvey asked about the frequency of buses and nighttime services, in particular. Prior to the pandemic we conducted a pilot programme to examine where we could extend some of our services into the evening. Some pilots were very successful but some were not and we continued with the successful ones. Where we are designing new services through Connecting Ireland we will look to see if demand exists to put the frequency in from the beginning. The other important part of Connecting Ireland is getting a network of services and structure in place. Then, if we find there is a further demand for services at a greater frequency, including into the evening, early evening or into the nighttime, then we can seek to extend the service if we have the funding available to do that. A number of Local Link services already operate into the early evening and if there is demand for that then we will give the matter consideration

In terms of bringing bikes on buses, our priority is to ensure that services are accessible and accessible for wheelchair users because they have not been for very many years. I mean accessible to the extent that there is a low floor and the service does not require 24-hour bookings. The trade-off is that bikes can be carried in the storage area under a high-floor vehicle. We think wheelchair users should be prioritised, however, and a folding bike could be brought on buses.

We try to integrate Local Link services with rail services as much as we can. If there is a particular location where there is a lack of integration, as mentioned by the Senator, then we will examine the matter. Irish Rail is involved. As Irish Rail is a key part of our transport network it is important that we ensure that bus and rail services are integrated.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I would love a guidance note on bus stops. If the matter is left to local authorities then services will be haphazard because some of them do not believe in providing rural bus stops and they have too much to do anyway. That is my personal experience from dealing with lots of local authorities in my previous job. The NTA must outline a minimum target for local authorities because if it is left to them, then the provision might never happen.

Bus Éireann is responsible for timetables. Can the NTA put it under pressure to update the timetables because they are four years old?

I wish to raise the separate issue of the Ennis bus roll-out, as the NTA delegation is present. We had a meeting with the NTA and discovered that it will wait until decisions are made about bus stops and all the infrastructure before starting the tender process, which takes another nine months. That is a ridiculous situation. Why does the NTA have to wait until everything is done before issuing the tender?

Local Link bus services are very visible yet teens do not know about them. I have convinced loads of teens who never knew about it to avail of Local Link buses and think the service is for old people. Therefore, I suggest that a Leap card that provides free travel is given to every 14 or 15-year-old and that the service is promoted using a cool teen thing on TikTok or social media. In general, teenagers are dying to get away from their parents and the teenagers that I told about the service have used it ever since.

Lastly, the NTA plan says that its plan will see a 25% overall increase in rural bus services. If we were serious about people in rural Ireland availing of buses instead of driving their cars then the percentage should be 250% or 500%. The NTA must have a greater vision if we are deadly serious about reaching targets. Rural drivers will get blamed and then the Green Party will get blamed for making them drive everywhere. If we want people in rural areas to transition to using buses then we must give them other choices.

As I have said, services for the disabled are a priority but there are other ways, such as putting bike racks on buses. I have costed such a provision and insurance. There are other options available. It is not a case of choosing one or the other because you can do both.

Ms Anne Graham:

The Senator quoted a figure of 25%. What document is she quoting?

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I quoted the key message of the Connecting Ireland plan. I read up on it this morning again and the plan states: "Over 100 rural villages will benefit from frequent public transport services." The plan will also see a 25% overall increase in rural bus services and "There will be over 60 new connections to regional cities from surrounding areas."

Ms Anne Graham:

I think that is in terms of vehicle kilometres operated. Am I correct?

Mr. Tim Gaston:

And that is for one year.

Ms Anne Graham:

One year, yes. That is not the full programme.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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So it is 25% for one year.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

It is a five-year programme.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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What percentage is envisaged for the full programme?

Mr. Tim Gaston:

Sorry, Senator.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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Mr. Gaston does not have to tell me now.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

I have not got the exact number. We doubled passenger trips from last year to this year. We came from a low base and we have doubled it.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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A very low base.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

We anticipate that we will double the number again this year with 70-odd services going in. Over the next two to three years of the programme I would anticipate that we will double the number again. We used to carry in the order of 25,000 passengers per week. At the minute we are heading to 60,000 passengers and we expect that figure to double over the next 12 months or so. During the remainder of the programme the number should double again, which means that the number of passengers is getting closer to where we think it should be. There will still be growth to do. When Connecting Ireland finishes, there will still be other changes to be made. It is not as if that will be an end and suddenly nothing. Subject to getting continued funding from the Government, and we are hopeful that we will get that funding, we expect to see that scale of change.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the delegations for their submissions. My first two questions are for the NTA representatives. I ask them to give us figures on the subvention to Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann and Local Link, respectively. I also ask them to provide the expenditure per capitaof the population.

We know from experience that as frequency is increased, there will be more passengers. That is obvious when you take the train from Belfast to Derry, Cork to Cobh or anywhere else. As a very good example, after a long battle in which it took a year and a half for the NTA to make up its mind, the authority gave us three extra services to An Cheathrú Ruain the evening and the number of passengers exploded. Has the NTA done empirical studies to decide what is the optimum service frequency that brings the most gain in terms of the number of passengers versus cost? It is critical to have that information because it seems to becoming increasingly apparent that where there is, say, a minimum of ten services each way daily, it results in very good patronage. I stress that the services must be throughout the day.

An example of where the NTA is falling down is a case I have raised endlessly with the authority. The radial routes out of the cities are becoming hugely important, and I mean up to a distance of 100 km because lots of young people in particular cannot afford to get or cannot get accommodation in towns that have third level educational institutions. Therefore, people must travel huge distances to attend the University of Galway, Atlantic Technological University, the University of Limerick, University College Cork and so on. If a person wants to go west of Galway to Clifden, which is a very well frequented route where there are also a lot of new Ukrainian residents who are working, the Citylink bus timetable is such that the last bus departs at 17.50 or ten minutes to 6 p.m., which means anyone wishing to avail of it must get to the bus station ten or 15 minutes beforehand. Moreover, the last Bus Éireann bus departs at 18.15, which means getting to the bus station at 6 o'clock. Those departure times do not give much time for a student or anybody else to socialise. They do not give any time for working late or doing overtime or to get there within the city. Amazingly, for some reason, there are buses to Oughterard that depart at 20.15 and 22.15 and it looks like the NTA made that decision for no apparent reason. You will not see the population because there are no big towns in the region but the reality is that people must travel five or ten miles to get to the bus stop. They pick people up. We have seen this patronage pattern. For some reason, somebody decided that Oughterard was enough. My understanding is that in the morning the buses are full going in but the reality is that they would be even fuller if you could get out at the time you choose in the evening. Can you imagine if Dublin Bus closed down its operations in Dublin City at 6 p.m., which would be like saying that if you do not want to come home at that time, then you do not get home? Such a stance would be ridiculous and I think we all know that.

The NTA's representatives might give their empirical evidence as to the reasons for that.

A minimum service was mentioned, but on reading the document I did not find a definition of that. The witnesses might just tell us what is meant by a "minimum service". Is that one service in one direction or two services in both directions a day? If it is, it is not a minimum service, it is a totally deficient service. I am curious as to what is intended.

I really welcome the move in fares, having crossed swords with the chief executive about rural fares in particular time and time again. I congratulate the Minister, who took pre-emptive action by reducing them all by 20%. Could the witnesses give us data on rural services? I say "rural" but it could originate or terminate in an urban area or vice versa? Could data be provided as to the increase in patronage and how much of it could be associated with the reduction in fares where the service remained the same? What research has been done into how fare sensitive bus services are? This is a key factor. If the number of passengers on a 40-seater bus is doubled from 20 to 40 we can afford to halve the fares and still get the same amount of revenue.

There are regular rural service, RRS, or fixed routes under the new Connecting Ireland initiative. Do we have a list of all the routes and the figures for the patronage on each route? That would be very useful. It would be interesting to look at the frequency of the route, the actual routes themselves and the patronage on the route to see the relationship on these routes between frequency and patronage. That is a key issue as some of the areas have quite low populations.

What is the number of rural hackney licences in existence at the moment? I understand the number is abysmally low. I know people who gave up applying because the word on the street is that they are wasting their time. They applied, only to be told there were hackney licences in the area. If a person has a taxi or hackney licence, it does not stop him or her solely operating the taxi or hackney in the city. One can go 30 or 40 miles and work from the city. I know people who do that. The idea that an area has a hackney or taxi service available because somebody's residence is in the area is a myth.

The witnesses will be aware that I put forward the idea previously that in return for support, a person would have to provide a basic service at certain times within the operational area. Such people could do what they want outside of that but, for example, on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night when the pubs are open and so on, they would have to provide a service in a fixed area on those nights in return for getting a subvention. I am very interested in such a scheme because it does not seem to me that the system is working. I have seen cases where the local authorities have recommended that an applicant would get a rural hackney licence, as there is a need. Could we get details from the NTA of the number of cases where the application stated the local authority recommended it and the NTA subsequently turned it down?

The roll-out of solar panels in rural Ireland will happen rapidly. Lots of rural people have plenty of roof spaces on their houses. It is not like living in an apartment. They own the roof space. A lot of them have big gardens also. Lots of rural people will be able to travel if they have an electric vehicle and will cause no pollution once the vehicle is purchased. What is the plan to ensure that Bus Éireann, Citylink, or the main contracted buses either operate electrically or on hydrogen? What is the plan for ensuring that the Local Link buses are electric? What assistance will be given in terms of charging points to ensure this? It is easier for Bus Éireann. I know it has great plans for hydrogen buses in Galway. It has already gone electric on the city fleet but not on the rural buses. Not everybody is as big as Bus Éireann, however. What plan does the NTA have? There is no point in having a decarbonised car fleet and not having a decarbonised bus fleet because then the buses will be a problem.

I join with Senator Garvey in saying that we need to clarify the situation with buses. I know the pick up and drop-off service is at a person's house or the nearest point to it, but on the regular rural services, the RRSs, what is the official position on where the bus stops? I am not asking about anything that might be happening in practice - I presume the NTA would prefer not to know about it - but is it the situation that there are fixed stops and how far apart are they? My understanding is that some of the stops are 10 km apart. That means people have to get into their car to get to the bus stop. That is stupid. On the other hand, the school bus manages to have pull-in points that it deems to be adequately safe, although it does not pull in everywhere. I agree we need to move fast with bus stops, but that is going to take a while. In the meantime, the next best thing is the point where everybody knows the bus stops, but we cannot accept that the stops would be 10 km apart.

My last point relates to disability. Does the NTA insist that the buses it licences to provide regular services on routes have the capacity to carry wheelchairs? It is very important to talk to wheelchair users about the specification of modern electric wheelchairs. There is no point in giving a specification that a bus must take a wheelchair in theory but it can only take a certain type of wheelchair. Can a bus take a number of wheelchairs? What happens if two or three people with wheelchairs arrive at a bus stop? First, what is the situation in regard to people with disabilities in wheelchairs accessing buses? How does the NTA ensure that all services – Local Link, Bus Éireann and all the other contracted services are accessible to people with disabilities?

Ms Anne Graham:

I will work backwards if that is okay with the Deputy. Some of the information will have to be provided, as we do not have it available today. I will list what those are. On the disability side, we in the NTA procure the buses for Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus as part of a national programme. As part of that, those buses are lo floor and wheelchair accessible. There is one wheelchair space on those buses. Providing a second wheelchair space would remove a large amount of seating, which then impacts on other users who might have mobility issues, although they may not be wheelchair users. We have to balance it between the number of people that can be seated on a bus with some mobility issues and those who are in a wheelchair. For the services that we contract, we are driving the low-floor accessibility of those services through the purchase of fleet and a specification in the services that we contract as well. We have a very high level of accessibility in our Local Link services. Ms McElligott can give those figures.

In the services that we licence, there is currently not a requirement for them to be wheelchair accessible. We did carry out a public consultation just before Covid and we were just about to impose conditions associated with accessibility when the pandemic happened. It would not have been appropriate to put in place those kind of conditions on an industry that was suffering with reductions in revenues associated with the pandemic.

We are now looking at those license conditions again. We want to combine them with looking at setting out emission standards for those buses as well. We are currently working on that. I would imagine that we will be going out for consultation again this year on what could be license conditions for both emissions and also wheelchair accessibility for those licensed services.

In terms of moving our fleet, both the fleet that is owned by the NTA but also the fleet that is contracted by the NTA in rural Ireland be electric or zero emission, we commenced our work first of all in urban areas. We have an obligation to ensure that fleet is not diesel. We initially purchased hybrid buses to test them out, which would have an approximate 30% reduction in carbon emissions, and we now have a fully electric fleet on which we commenced our first pilot service. Our first fully electric service commenced in Athlone and is operated by Bus Éireann.

While we have identified a solution for our urban fleet, which can operate all day and be charged overnight, we have not yet identified what will be the solution to drive the zero-emission target in the longer distance fleet in our rural and regional services. We are piloting this, however. We purchased three hydrogen fuel buses for operation by Bus Éireann, which operates on them on the 105 service that serves Ratoath and Ashbourne, to test them out and see what issues are associated with using hydrogen fuel and whether hydrogen will be available to support further buses. They are obviously more expensive buses so we have to start with a pilot initially and see whether we can extend that further out.

This year, we will commence to see what the market has available in terms of a longer distance zero-emission fleet that could operate for much longer periods and over longer distances in order that we can move the fleet that is operated by us or that is provided directly by us for our contracted services, whether those are provided by Bus Éireann or some of our Local Link operators. We know we have to drive that, but we just need the technology to be a little bit more advance to enable us to operate a battery electric fleet that can operate for much longer periods over longer distances in rural Ireland.

We have a pilot service in Dingle, which has had some trials in terms of getting it up. There were certainly learnings for us in trying to get one of our services to be fully electric in Dingle. We hope to launch that later this year. That has also given us many learnings in how to deliver electric charging points for a bus system in rural Ireland. There is plenty more to do on our side, however.

I have the numbers on the hackney side, which I will give to the Deputy now. We have approximately 27 local area hackneys, two of which are grant aided. We launched a pilot scheme in one local area in which a €6,000 grant is available for one year for those local area hackney pilots. As the Deputy said, however, they have to operate at certain hours as part of the grant conditions. We received 41 applications in respect of 15 of the areas we identified. We had identified 21 areas but received no applications whatsoever from six areas. We made 15 provisional grant offers. Of the 15 that have been issued, one candidate has completed the licensing process and five of the other candidates have progressed to the second stage, which means they have commenced the licensing process. I have the areas, which I can send to the Deputy separately. This is a pilot scheme to try to identify the issues that are preventing the local area hackney being a success in local areas. We will monitor what happens across the year and see whether there is anything else that needs to be done to try to deliver a lot more hackney services in rural Ireland.

Mr. Gaston might wish to talk about the fares.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

On the fares side, we just completed a fares strategy, which we published last week. We shared that with public representatives and got some feedback. The fares will move nationally to a structure that is based on the distance as the crow flies between A and B. There will be a boarding charge plus a charge per kilometre across all of our networks including Bus Éireann, Irish Rail and Local Link. It will take some time to implement the change in fare structures because some of them involve quite significant changes to the existing computer systems that run fares, such as the Leap system and other systems on Bus Éireann and Irish Rail services. We plan to publish a fares determination in the early summer period setting out what the new fare structures will be and an indicative timetable as to how quickly those will be rolled out.

In terms of rural Ireland, when we introduce rural regular services, we try as much as possible to replicate the existing Bus Éireann structure, bearing in mind the direction I already described us moving towards. The rural regular structure is similar but not identical to the Bus Éireann structure. It is all in the mix to be changed shortly.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I asked about the reduction in fares. Did the patronage improve?

Mr. Tim Gaston:

The fare income for 2022 was €2.9 million.

Ms Anne Graham:

I think the Deputy's question is about whether the reduction in fares has driven passenger numbers.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

I am sorry. We did some research on this and found that by and large price is not the biggest determinant for whether people will use public transport. It is no surprise that the determinants are whether there is a service and whether the frequency matches the sorts of travel patterns people want to have. From research we carried out recently, price is becoming less and less important. It does feature in the surveys, but it is at a very low level. We do not believe that bringing in massive further fare reductions would, in fact, bring large numbers of people onto public transport. That elasticity has largely run its course with the reductions we have seen from the Minister.

Ms Anne Graham:

It was very hard to determine after that reduction went in what was the natural growth of return post pandemic and what was driven by the fares. There is no doubt that the fare reduction certainly did drive some increase in services of approximately 5% and 10% possibly. Again, however, there were so many other changes-----

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Is Ms Graham talking nationally?

Ms Anne Graham:

Yes, nationally.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I understand it was used disparately. For example, commuters did not pick up in the urban area. The DART and so forth did not pick up as much as services in rural areas.

Ms Anne Graham:

Only on-----

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Has the NTA looked at the rural services?

Ms Anne Graham:

The rural services did even better, so-----

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That is what I am saying. Was that because-----

Ms Anne Graham:

That was driven not just by the fares but also the frequency that was being introduced and the new services. Fares would have driven part of that, but we did not do any specific research on rural services and the fare reduction. I do not think that would be the case.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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This is a key point. If a person gets a train or bus here in Dublin, we are talking €1 or €2. If a person gets a bus 30 miles in rural Ireland, he or she could pay €10 or €15 for a return ticket. It gets much more price sensitive when we get up to the bigger ones. That is why I am asking about whether the NTA has differentiated between price sensitivity and taking 10 cent or 20 cent off an urban journey and €2 off a €10 journey in a rural area.

Ms Anne Graham:

We have not done that kind of detailed analysis. However, we can certainly see from the data we have whether we can derive that kind of information. We could possibly do it through research with passengers to see what their sensitivities are. In the research to which Mr. Gaston referred, in general terms, the top issue to drive numbers onto public transport is frequency of services.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That was another question I asked. Have we empirical research evidence or is it just that the NTA knows for a fact? The witnesses accept as fact that frequency drives patronage.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

We know that for a fact. We have done research that shows that to be the case. The single biggest thing that would bring people onto public transport is having a service and then the second biggest is the frequency of the service. The Deputy made the points earlier about how many services there are and minimum service and standards and so on. Absolutely, we know that is what will drive volume.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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What is the minimum service?

Ms Anne Graham:

I am just getting to that. Reliability is another issue customers certainly rely on, probably ahead of fare sensitivity. The absolute minimum level of service is three services per day, seven days a week. That would be for very small settlements. In many cases the frequency is a lot higher but that is the minimum service we want for the smallest settlements. As the Deputy asked about evidence, I will elaborate. The proposals in the Connecting Ireland programme are based on empirical evidence about population, travel demand, looking at the statistics that are available through the census about where people are travelling to and where they want to go. We then sense-check that with the local authorities, our Local Link partners and our bus operators, to see if that is the appropriate level of service to start off with and that the appropriate places are being served at the frequency that the evidence shows is necessary. That is how we have commenced. The good thing about bus services is that they can be dynamically improved if we have the funding available, and it can be easily done through our operators.

The Deputy asked us a question on figures on subvention. I do not have the Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann subvention figures, but I can obtain them and pass them on. We do not necessarily drive what we are doing on a per capitabasis, or even necessarily on a cost basis. We do not necessarily look at the net cost. We look at serving the demand by providing the necessary service is. From the evidence that has been heard, people are responding so we know that the demand is there and we are delivering on it. Unless we found that a service has a very low usage we would not consider amending or removing it. We have not had to do so in the past five years, I think. In all cases where we have improved the service, the public have responded.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Will the witness get me those figures, please?

Ms Miriam McKenna:

I am the Local Link TCU project manager in Louth, Meath and Fingal. The area is a combination of urban near Dublin and very rural. I want to speak about the new 188 service we put in place a couple of months ago. It goes from Athboy, County Meath, through Navan and various areas and ends in Drogheda. The service began on a Monday and the following week we started counting our passengers. On the second week of service, we had 1,400 passengers. We then looked at where they were boarding and alighting. The service covered employment, education and also tourism because it goes to Newgrange. It also covers health because it goes from one hospital to the other. When they get into Drogheda they do not just go to the bus station. The bus continues on and goes to the hospital and picks up at the hospital in Navan. Now people in Navan and County Meath generally can come to Navan which is the central depot, for most of our services. They can get on the bus and get to the hospital in Drogheda which is the first time that I have seen anything that interacts so well. I would love to have loads more of this type of service, I am begging for them. We also run a regular Facebook competition with Leap cards as the prizes. We now know that the type of passenger is not specifically just older people or younger people. Everybody is using the service because when it is put out there with good publicity, it works. When all the factors that I have listed are added in, it works very well and that is what we want more of.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for attending today. With the NTA present I am tempted to start talking about Bus Connects but I will stick to the brief. Having listened to other members raising issues I agree with Senator Garvey that the issue of bus shelters seems to be a very tortuous process. It can be extremely slow. It is not unlike a number of other issues in this regard, where multiple agencies are involved. Progress can be remarkably slow on things that would appear to be easily achievable to the public. I have lived all my life in places that have been served by bus routes that run at 20 or 25-minute intervals. However, the reality in many rural communities is starkly different. I have three main questions. It is clear that significant progress has been made. We have gone from a starting position of effectively no transport or very localised transport not supported by the State some years ago, to a position now where many communities are served. However, there is still room for improvement. The bit that jumps out at me first is in respect of the NTA statement and the idea of an app-based demand-responsive service, which is an interesting idea. I would like to hear a bit more about it. It sounds a bit like a rural version of the Free Now app or something like that, but perhaps I am wrong and maybe the witnesses can tell me a bit more about it.

This question is for both the NTA and Irish Rural LInk. With any of these routes, whether it is the fixed routes or the demand-responsive routes, public money is involved with an element of subvention. A balance has to be struck in approving it as to the community benefit and then the cost to the NTA and the Exchequer. What is the threshold? At what level does the NTA decide it is not going to approve a certain fixed or demand-responsive route? What criteria are applied? From Irish Rural Link's point of view, are any of the criteria too onerous? Rural communities are diverse. Some rural areas are quite densely populated such as Gweedore, for example. Others are very sparsely populated, such as large parts of south Kerry or the Sheep's Head Peninsula, County Cork, and other places. Rural is not all the one, as I am sure the witnesses well know. In what areas does Irish Rural Link find that the thresholds that the NTA applies are perhaps too onerous or that the test is not quite fair and perhaps need to be revised?

In both in urban and rural contexts, the distribution of people travelling throughout the day or week is not even. Travel is concentrated at certain times. Schools are an obvious example of this and the school transport programme is in place for that work. Very often the timetables can reflect the uneven distribution and there is a glut of morning services and evening services whether it is on the Bus Éireann routes or some of the fixed rural transport links. However, within a given week, there are frequent and regular events that a large amount of people go to within a community. There is a balance here, because there is space for purely private contractors and they have a right to operate and they have their role to play. Take for example a community that has Thursday night bingo in the local GAA hall, is there scope for providing a service in this case or is this more suited to the private sector? To give another example, take a large rural community where 40% of children go to soccer or GAA training. Is there a possibility in cases like this where many people are travelling at the one time to an event? Perhaps the witnesses' response will be that this is better suited to the private sector, properly so called, with no public involvement. However, there are times in the week, outside of school and work when people travel, sometimes in large groups. Is there scope to do more to address this issue?

Ms Anne Graham:

I will address the last question first. The point about the delivery of rural transport is to address how public transport should be regular and frequent. That is the type of demand we are trying to address. A once-off event can be difficult to address. Ms McKenna and Ms McElligot will cover some of the once-off services that we provide funding for.

In general-----

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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In case Ms Graham has not understood me, I will clarify what I mean by "once-off". I am not talking about someone organising an event for, say, next Thursday; I am talking about an event held once a week, say, every Thursday or Saturday.

Ms Anne Graham:

We are trying to provide regular services every day across the week. Operating a service on one day does not necessarily correspond with a regular transport service. That is not to say there are never once-off services, even on a frequent basis. However, they are community-based services. I will ask Mr. Gaston to respond on the app-based demand responsive transport, DRT.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

App-based DRT or smart DRT as we are calling it, is a project we launched recently. We have just appointed a dedicated project manager to manage it. We hope to go to public procurement shortly for the provider of the system. The Deputy mentioned the branding of a particular taxi firm. There are some similarities but also some differences. I will take a few minutes to explain the vision we have for it.

Customers will download an app onto a smart mobile phone or will telephone the office. The journey they want to take will be registered by the computer system and there will be a small fleet of minibuses or low-floor buses - ideally, these will be electric when we can get them rolled out - in a given geographical region. The region could be part of a county or an area where there are not sufficient regular services. It is to enable people to do the things they want to do. This is for dispersed populations. The fleet of minibuses will be moving around in that area. When customers register that they want to go from A to B, the system will send them back an offer. For example, it will tell them they cannot be collected exactly where they are but they can be picked up at the crossroads 300 m away and that they cannot be collected at 2 p.m. but they can be collected at 1.45 p.m. It is shared mobility, so customers will get onto the minibus with other people who are doing similar journeys in that region. It may not take customers exactly where they want to go, but it will take them to a point within a given tolerance, which might be 200 m or 300 m. Customers will have approximately five minutes to accept that offer. They will have already pre-loaded their payment card details onto the app so there is no need for a payment process when the vehicle turns up. Customer are told that the driver, Tim, will meet them at this point and the driver is told that Anne, the customer, will be at this point. From that point on, the journey will be shared mobility. This system works well in other parts of the world.

I visited England and saw two different schemes that are working on this basis. They come at a price. As the Deputy will imagine, the cost of the driver and vehicle is relatively high, but we think it is a good solution for providing a service to fill the gaps where regular services would simply be too expensive because of the dispersed nature of the population. We are planning to run three pilot projects, one that is very rural; one that might be semi-rural, for example on the outskirts of a town or that includes a town; and one that is semi-urban. We will learn from those three pilots and then we will have a better feel for the cost of running that kind of system.

It will work for people who can use their mobile phones, but will still work - this is where the transportation control unit, TCU, network comes in - for people who cannot use an app. They can still phone and the operator in the TCU will input the journey and give the customer the necessary information about possibilities for being picked up and dropped off. We think it is a good solution but we want to trial it to see how it works in rural Ireland, how people take to it and how solid the technology is. We hope to go to the market for that this year and to run pilots next year. We think it has good potential.

Ms Bl?th?n McElligott:

The Deputy mentioned our demand responsive services, for example, a service to run once on a Thursday every Thursday for a specific event, or one that may just go to a town or village at a certain time. We cater for those kinds of timetables, say, every week on a Thursday or Friday. They can be in the day or evening. As the Deputy can imagine, many of them did not operate during the pandemic and they have taken quite a while to return to normal service. However, we provide some demand responsive services in the network.

Mr. Alan Kerry:

On the Deputy's question around the Threshold and regular rural services and demand responsive services, we are in a fortunate position that people in rural Ireland now have the benefit of having services delivered by a national agency which is co-ordinated at a local point. Since the Deputy asked the question, I have thought about it. From our experience in Kildare and south Dublin, we have never had a service refused. That signifies the basis of need that can be identified at the local point of service.

We probably need to remember where we have come from. I started in the job in 2007. Ms McKenna has a few years more experience. We were part of the transition to the National Transport Authority's management of rural transport services in 2014. It is appropriate in a forum such as this, to acknowledge the systemic change that has happened in the availability of public transport in rural areas. That is an honest and valid description of the current situation. We can also remember - I think Deputy Ó Cuív was part of the process at the initial stages - that the objective of the rural transport initiative when it commenced in the late 1990s and early 2000s was to remove dependence on friends and family members to give people access to independence to do their business, whether it was shopping or collecting their pension. We must recognise and be mindful of the demographic change that has happened. The main benefactors of the services at that time were widows, holders of free travel passes and people of my mother's generation who perhaps never drove a car and when the man of the house was no longer there, they became dependent on family and friends. Everyone involved can look back and say that we achieved the target. Dependence was definitely reduced in that time.

Now we must raise our ambition and take the benefit of having an association with an organisation such as the National Transport Authority. Our objective is no longer to remove dependence on individuals or family members. It is now to remove dependence on second, third, fourth and in some cases even fifth cars in rural households. We need the collaborative approach from all the elements that have been discussed here this morning, including the bus stop infrastructure Senator Garvey mentioned and the fare structures. No single piece of the jigsaw will solve the issue. It is only when we gather all the pieces together that we will move forward in a comprehensive manner to overcome the challenges that have been identified.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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That is encouraging. I appreciate it. It is positive to hear. The app-based stuff sounds good but it is vital that the people on the other end of the phone have local knowledge. I am anticipating a dispute between a customer and someone based in Dublin about the name of a crossroads. It is important that people have local knowledge when they pick up the phone.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their submissions. The discussion is useful. Senator Garvey set the scene for rural areas. Her area is no different from any other rural area. Deputy Ó Cuív raised a question about bringing down the fares. The fares came down and more people are using public transport. I was at Heuston Station this morning and it as chock-a-block. I have seen the service from Heuston Station to Castlebar, Westport and Ballina over the years. The number of people who are using it now, compared to previously, is unbelievable. I believe that is because of the reduction in fares. There is no change in service. People have been getting the same number of services for the past 20 or 30 years so the cost of fares definitely has an impact.

It certainly has an impact on students as well. There are a lot more students using public transport, both buses and trains. The Athenry to Limerick route has been used more by students over the last year or so.

Mr. Boland raised an important point when he said we should all work closer together. Huge advances have been made in public transport over the last number of years, but on Mr. Boland's suggestion that we should work closer together, who co-ordinates it and brings it all together? There is the TFI Local Link and the local authorities. Is anybody or any group bringing it together? The NTA has said that it is working on an app and on bringing things forward. The local authorities and TFI Local Link also have a function, but there does not seem to be anybody bringing it all together. Is there any way or any suggestion of how it can be brought together?

Ms Anne Graham:

In my opening statement, I mentioned bringing services together. That is the NTA's function. We have a role in integrating services. We fund all the infrastructure associated with that. As a body, we can bring that infrastructure together. There are a number of delivery partners that have to deliver elements of the infrastructure, and we are prepared to work with local authorities to deliver that, as we do already. What we need to do is to encourage local authorities to be more ambitious in delivering the infrastructure, to have it on their work list so that they do not just maintain the roads but also consider active travel and provision for bus infrastructure as part of that. We have the funding available to be able to support that. We need to engage much more actively with the local authorities and other delivery partners to really get that element of the infrastructure up and running as quickly as possible.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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When Ms Graham says the NTA has funding, does she mean that it can provide the funding to the local authority, as well as to the NTA?

Ms Anne Graham:

Yes, we can provide the funding to the local authority.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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I think that is news to us all. As Senator Garvey said earlier, there are very few posts up, particularly on the main thoroughfares where TFI buses are stopping. They are stopping on the side of the road, but nobody, other than the odd person who uses the service frequently, seems to know that they are stopping there. I agree with Senator Garvey that the signs or posts should go up. That is all that needs to go up. There should also be something provided for bicycles, whereby cyclists can park a bicycle there. In my time, you could leave the bike on the side of the road and it would be there when you came back, but if you did the same thing now it would not be there when you came back, for sure. Something should be provided along with the sign that goes up, because people live downside roads and they are not always able to access transport to get to the public transport. That is probably putting them off using public transport. I am delighted to hear that there is funding available and that the NTA is linking in with the local authorities, because the local authorities need to be pushed. I suppose it is also our duty to call on them to do that.

Ennis is a bit bigger, but there is no public transport within the towns like Castlebar and Ballinasloe, which are a similar same size. The services operate from one or two miles on one side to one or two miles on the far side. The Local Link could link into the outposts of the public transport services, and the public transport services could operate more frequently within the towns to make them more viable. Are there any plans for providing public transport in towns like Castlebar, Ennis and so forth? Is there funding available and are there plans in place for that?

Mr. Tim Gaston:

I will take that question. There is both funding and plans. However, like bus poles, we are coming from place where there are not town services in all towns that we would want to have town services in. We have had successful town services for quite some considerable time in Sligo, Athlone, Drogheda and places like that. We are just about to launch a new service in Carlow, which is being operated by Bus Éireannn, and we are working on Mullingar, Portlaoise, Letterkenny and Ennis. We are also not too far away from launching a new service in Clonmel. We are slowly working through the towns based largely on the population. It will take some years to get there, but we aim to try to have a town service at some level in every town of 10,000 or so. We see that as the population threshold. Beyond that, depending on the success of the smart-based DRT that I described earlier, there may well be an opportunity to base some of those around areas where there may be a cluster of smaller towns, and a service between them could be provided through that means. That is our target. We have a team working on that at the minute. That is within the overall umbrella of Local Link and Connecting Ireland. There is high level co-ordination, as the Senator would imagine, between the teams looking at towns and rural services. The teams work very closely together.

Mr. Alan Kerry:

I think the Senator raised a valid point, but to provide any solution, we have to be competently aware of what the problem is. One of the issues that we do not have at the moment and we have not experienced in recent years, thankfully, is funding. We can say that funding is there and is available to us. However, I am starting to recognise in my role that resource does not equal capacity. You may have the resource for positions or to do a particular job, but do you have the skill sets? From a sustainable mobility perspective and when I look around the room, with the exception of one or two who are of a similar vintage, we know that 15 years ago the average bus that ran around rural Ireland was a school bus. That operated in a very different manner from how we would progress to operate public transport services. When we look at and consider local authorities, up to now, there were people - and I mean no disrespect to engineers - who were responsible for widening roads and making them more available to private car usage and all the rest of it. They are now the people who we associate with the responsibility for road space reallocation. Road space reallocation is a critical part of any discussion that we have on to how we are going to progress public transport in rural areas. It is very hard to differentiate between the urban town and the rural area. We have services that are running very competently and meeting their schedules. There are no issues on that side until they get to the outskirts of the town. Then they have to argue for that same piece of tarmac as a single car driver on that road. My point is that as we sit in this environment, we all need to consider resourcing and capacity. While we may have the resources, do we have the capacity? That is a piece of work that needs to be done. We must look at skill sets, and ensure that we create a mindset in relation to what sustainable mobility is, because that is now how we have travelled in this country up to now. We are going to have to bring people with us, and we are going to have to be able to show areas of success. We are going to have to be able to identify pilot areas where we can say that it works and can set out what we want to do next. From a Local Link perspective, we can be very proud of the fact that any services that we have put in place under the Connecting Ireland Rural Mobility Plan have been successful. There are local authority areas that see them and say they want one of them. That has to be deemed as a success. We have to get better at identifying our own successes and what is working, but we also have to be brave and honest enough to speak about what is missing so that we can really bring that top-end service that is required.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I remind members that those participating online should use the raise-hand function to indicate if they wish to contribute. I call Senator Wall.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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I welcome our guests today. It is good to see them again. It is only a week since we last met with some of them. I want to start by acknowledging Mr. Kerry. As he mentioned in his introduction, he is responsible for Kildare and south Dublin. I have daily and weekly briefings with him on various issues. I want to put on the record, as I did last Wednesday when I spoke at the fares briefing, the respect I have for Local Link, what it does and the difference it has made for rural Kildare, in particular, where I live.

It has been a game-changer, and it is important to start there. For many people in rural villages, locations and towns, Rural Link has been a game-changer. If we look at the 883 service between Athy and Newbridge it has made a spectacular difference for people going to work. I have mentioned this at several briefings. People are using it to get to work. It is essential for those who do not have their own transport and did not have access to public transport previously. This has to be acknowledged. I also want to put on record our thanks to the staff who operate Local Link and Rural Link. They are at the end of the phone when we have queries. As public representatives, we get a lot of queries. It is good to have someone to speak to in connection with them.

I have started with the good news, but I want to come back to the poles. This is critical for Local Link and Rural Link. It was mentioned by Senator Garvey and others. Mr. Gaston spoke about speeding up the roll-out. What does this mean for people? Senator Burke referred to local authorities. I speak to both sides on the issue. I am not saying that one is blaming the other, but I do find a little of that. What can we do to speed it up? There is absolutely no doubt that this is a terrific service. I admit that it is mainly through word of mouth that the service is growing. People do not know where to get on or off the buses. They look at the website. They come into my office and we have printed timetables. We put our names on them, and it is great for us as we get a bit of publicity. This is what is happening. The service needs to be advanced. It needs to be advertised. The biggest issue in advertising is the location of bus stops and where people get on and off. Mr. Gaston spoke about speeding up the roll-out. What does this mean for the 883 route, in respect of which there are no bus poles at present? When will we see those being put in place? This was asked about by Senator Garvey last Wednesday. It is essential for the infrastructure and the growth of this terrific service. I ask Mr. Gaston to come back on this.

Senator Burke raised an issue that I also want to raise. It is with regard to town bus services. Every town except Newbridge was mentioned. The reason I want to speak about Newbridge is that Ms Graham is very familiar with the campaign we have in respect of train fares from Newbridge. Newbridge has experienced growth beyond anyone's belief to a point where it now has a population of 25,000. Towns with populations of 10,000 have been mentioned. Newbridge has a population of 25,000. People phone me to tell me that they are getting taxis to the train station from the outskirts of Newbridge where new houses have been built. Because of the length of their journeys, people are looking for a bus service. They have to pay for taxis get to the train station. Towns with populations of 10,000 have bus services. When will Newbridge, which has a population of 25,000 - it is growing every day - have a service? This is an essential question for us. It is something I am asked about on a regular, particularly as the town has seen such growth. It has expanded almost as far as the Curragh. When I was a member of the local authority, I raised the fact that infrastructure is not keeping pace with the building of houses. We all know there is a crisis and we must build houses but we are putting people further and further away from town centres and further from train stations. Infrastructure is not being built. I would like witnesses to comment on this.

Mr. Kerry is very familiar with the fact that services are in the pipeline for Athy, Kildangan and Rathangan, which are very important towns in south Kildare. I refer here to the 888 service. I am not sure whether we have an update on when it will come through. I believe it is in process, which is great. I am looking forward to it because I get calls on it and I deflect them to Mr. Kerry on a regular basis. When will it come on stream? This is an essential service for south Kildare. The people in these towns and villages are looking forward to the service. Perhaps the witnesses have information on the matter.

School buses were mentioned. I have discussed this matter with the witnesses. There has to be a link between school bus transport and Local Link. When we get a new schedule I get calls from parents asking whether, for example, a 4 p.m. departure time can be changed to 4.15 p.m. because their children would then have access to it. This would help the entire situation. Are there conversations between school bus transport and the NTA on accommodating this? Mr. Kerry is also familiar with the issue regarding the 880 Carlow to Castledermot service that I have asked about. Both companies operate in silos when they should complement each other. That 15 minutes may make a difference. I know there were issues with regard to the times of this particular service but I hope we can get over it and children going from Carlow back to Castledermot could get on the bus and save the State a bus service, which is what we ought to do. There should be a bit of co-operation between the services.

Ms Anne Graham:

This is the first request we have received for a town service in Newbridge. As Mr. Gaston indicated, we have a long list to get through. We have a priority list. A town the size of Carlow has never had a bus service. We need to prioritise because we cannot deliver everywhere. The list that Mr. Gaston indicated will take us up to 2025 to deliver. We can certainly look at a request regarding Newbridge and put it on the list.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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Ms Graham will have one on her desk later today.

Ms Anne Graham:

We will put it on the list for consideration. The 888 service is on our list for delivery this year. It is scheduled for delivery in the third quarter of the year. With regard to school bus transport it is obvious that we would try to facilitate local connections where we can and as long as the issue is informed to us, the Local Link office or Bus Éireann we will certainly facilitate it if we possibly can.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

I do not have the exact numbers with regard to the poles. I will come back to Senator Wall with them. From memory, it is something in the order of 12,000 to 15,000. It depends on poles used by multiple operators in cities. This year we hope to put in the order of 1,000 new poles into the ground with the sockets and carousels that I mentioned. These are the numbers off the top of my head and I will come back to Senator Wall with exact numbers.

The reason we need to speed this up is because if they go in at a rate of 1,000 a year and there 12,000 it would take 12 years. Clearly that will not work. We need to get better at it. We are putting together a programme to do the design work that needs to be done to ensure it is safe. Often there is not a pole on just one side of the road and there is also one on the other side of the road. Then we have the issue of whether people will cross the road and whether we are creating a hazard. Would it be worse if we did not put in poles? There is a big debate to be had.

We are trying to bring together design of the infrastructure and its provision and make it a more streamlined process. There is also approval and we are in detailed discussions with the local authorities about this. It will take a bit of time. We have funding for it. Earlier, Mr. Kerry touched on resources. We are finding it difficult to get the engineers and, in some cases, the construction resources to carry out this work. We ran some tenders recently and had a very limited response to them because there is so much other construction activity going on in the country. There is bit of competition going on to get the right resources. Certainly there is a strong desire in the NTA to increase the rate of rolling out new poles and, very often, replacing existing poles because some of them are what I will call time expired.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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Is there co-operation between the local authorities and the NTA? Are there constant conversations? One thousand into 12,000 does not really go, as Mr. Gaston has said. What can we do to speed things up?

Mr. Tim Gaston:

There are conversations. We are also competing with active travel work because often the same section in local authorities deal with them. We have very regular conversations with all of the local authorities in the country on this matter. We are trying to wind up the machinery. Certainly, there is no lack of desire on the part of the NTA to do so. In recent years, the need to do this has been referenced. We have had some success this year but we need to be faster.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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Last week, we attended the national fare strategy launch in Buswells Hotel across the road from here. Mr. Gaston mentioned fares being based on the distance as the crow flies. Does he think this will have a knock-on effect on rural transport? Some of the routes involve loops and so take longer than a route as the crow flies.

It is very important. Pricing was mentioned in the opening statements and the correlation between that and public transport. The cost of transport is still important for many people of the people I deal with. Does Mr. Gaston see these new "as the crow flies" routes as having a knock-on effect on local link and rural transport?

Mr. Tim Gaston:

Typically, as the crow flies route shortens the distance, which should reduce the fare. If somebody has to do a dogleg purely because that is where the buses happen to go, the crow-fly distance will be shorter and so in that case they should see a reduction in the fare, if anything, but it is very difficult to say. It is almost entirely case-specific. In some places, the fares were there because there was competition. The fares were lower than in other parts of the country where there may not have been competition. We are doing away with that. We are putting in a consistent national structure. We are hoping to get the detail of that published in early summertime.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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We will wait and see.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I acknowledge the huge positivity that has been in the room this morning. There are, of course, teething issues and there are places we want to improve. There is a natural impatience among public representatives who want these services rolled out as soon as possible to give maximum benefit but there is no doubting there has been a sea change in the provision of rural public transport. We are playing catch-up and there may be an element of us being victims of our own success. Senator Burke referred to the passenger numbers on the trains. As a frequent train user, I am well-acquainted with that as well. We are becoming victims of our own success in terms of the capacity on trains but that is all to the good.

Many of the issues I wanted to raise have been raised such as the bus shelters and the bus stops. The village of Annestown benefits from a fairly decent service between Tramore and Dungarvan but the only way people will be aware that there is a public transport option is if they see the bus pass through the village. Work needs to be done on visibility and the roll-out of bus stops. Senator Garvey referred to the need for flexibility in how that is applied. Again, I can provide another local example. A new service will run from Dungarvan to Clonmel and it will pass through the village of Ballymacarbry, which has been in dire need of public transport service for years. I am currently being told it will not be possible to put a bus stop in Ballymacarbry and, therefore, a bus will run through the village without stopping. If that goes ahead, that is insanity and I am anxious that would be resolved before the new route is put in place.

On this issue of accessibility, we have to make sure the accessibility is rolled out across the bus stops so that we have the low-floor buses. Another local example is the service from Tramore to Dunmore East. It is a new service that is well-used on an absolutely gorgeous costal route. There is an accessible bus stop in Tramore and, therefore, a wheelchair user can board the bus. There is not an accessible bus stop to my knowledge in Dunmore East. A wheelchair user can get on the bus in Tramore but he or she will have some craic getting off the bus in Dunmore East. It needs to be ensured there is uniformity across the board on that.

This is very much playing to stereotype as a Green Party member but I sometimes understand our public transport system as being a bit like a tree. Of course, I would say that. If I imagine the twigs, the branches and the trunk, the trunk is heavy rail. That is where the capacity is to carry the most people in the quickest way. The branches are the bus network and the twigs are active travel provision. We are discussing the branches: bus provision. I am not sure we are connecting well enough with the trunk. Senator Garvey gave some examples where the timetables do not line up. I lived in a very rural part of Germany. God help us, it was in the last millennium when I lived there. It was a good 25 years ago and if I got the bus from Homburg to Wabern, I always arrived in time for the Frankfurt train. It was seamless. As soon as I stepped off the Frankfurt train in Wabern, the bus pulled up. I did not have to think about it, worry about it or preplan. We need to get to that stage. I have a concern when I read the maps for Connecting Ireland that, in many cases, the route is shadowing routes a heavy rail connection. The route from Thomastown to Waterford city is an example. I would prefer people to be delivered into Thomastown in good time to catch the train to Waterford, rather than doubling up and providing a competing service. On the other end of the branch and into the twigs, we have to think about the active travel networks to make sure that people can get safely to the bus stops. There must be provision for passengers to leave their bikes if they have cycled in. This was mentioned previously. We need a good lock-up, preferably dry, spot so people are not leaving their bikes out in the rain. Something I have not heard mentioned at all this morning is the potential of e-bikes to greatly expand the radius. People might walk a kilometre to a bus stop and might cycle 5 km but they are put on an e-bike, the radius is substantially increased. People are not going to throw a €2,000 e-bike up onto the ditch on the side of the road. There needs to be some place where they can be locked safely.

I would like to ask a very focused question on the demographic of passengers. It has very much changed from what Mr. Kerry described as the widows. There is a very good skate park in Dungarvan and the young fellas are getting on the bus in Tramore. They are going up and having a skate for the day, hanging around with a few bodies, and heading back down. That is not a demographic I expected to see on Local Link services and it is a demographic I am really excited about seeing.

I have a more in-depth question about governance. Mr. Boland might be best placed to answer this. I give a name check to James O'Donoghue who is involved in Waterford Local Link and is absolutely outstanding in his role. We have a fantastic range of services. Some of the best Local Link services in the country are operating in the county. I cite the route from Dungarvan going through Lismore, Cappoquin and up into Tallow in particular. It is pretty much an hourly service, which is extremely well-frequented and extremely well-run. This service is being re-tendered on a four-year basis. Anybody could swoop in and offer an alternative tender. James O'Donoghue is trying to maintain his staff on that four-year rolling contract basis. I suspect every Local Link has that lynchpin person in the middle. If they are taken out because of how our governance structure is organised in the Local Links, it takes time to build that capacity. Is there a need to have supports around requirements such as general data protection regulation, GDPR, and all of those new initiatives that roll out and cost hours? I see Mr. Boland nodding at that. I do not suggest a more centralised service because we cannot lose that local knowledge given the level of local knowledge that I have seen in the Local Link providers is second to none. We are asking Local Link to take on a much greater burden in the provision of rural public transport. It has been, by and large, a success. The services are excellent and they are being well-used. However, in the context of what is a much greater workload, do the governance structures need to be rethought? Perhaps Mr. Boland will come in the last question first.

Mr. Seamus Boland:

Yes, I will come in on that and ask Mr. Kerry or Ms McKenna if they wish to add to what I will say.

We have a piece in our submission on the procurement and the four-year issue. We have asked in that piece that we really take a hard look at this. As we have stated in our submission, there is a lot of capacity and skills being built up and then in the four-year period, there is an uncertainty that these can be continued. As Mr. Kerry said, we are asking the honest question as to whether this is the best approach because it means there is uncertainty. I concur with the Deputy's acknowledgement of James O'Donoghue. I know him very well. He is passionate about the service and Waterford is very lucky to have somebody with his co-ordinating ability and structure. We in Irish Rural Link argue strongly that if the rural transport services are going to be developed, it has to be on a continuing basis. It has to move from, as Mr. Kerry outlined, where we were at one stage to the quite good place we are at now. However, the next stage is even more important.

The Leas-Chathaoirleach talked about when he lived in Germany. In 1994, I was able, with one ticket purchase, to get from the middle of absolutely rural nowhere in the south of England to the main railway station, from where I got the London train. I had to go to Ipswich. In Ballycumber, Offaly, where I live, I would love to be able to get the Leap card or another ticket in the local shop to take care of my journeys for the rest of the day. That is where we want to be.

Mr. Alan Kerry:

This is a very live subject for us. It is always beneficial if we can bring it back to an understanding of the point of origin and destination, which are important to transport planners. It would be remiss of us in this environment not to acknowledge the considerable dedication that exists through voluntary directorships. Our organisations are all managed by voluntary directors who give of their time monthly, including in regard to management subcommittee meetings. Each of the 15 structures is a charity.

I have been one of the lucky ones in that I took advantage of an NTA-supported venture in relation to academic qualifications. I sit here today as a sustainable transport planner, having undertaken and completed a master's degree in sustainable transport and mobility. It has been a game changer regarding what we would see as the priorities. However, we need to ask again how we can magnify the skill set. I have learned over recent years that, in leading people, you lead the people above as well as those below. Evidence, research and having examples of success are very important.

Let me refer to the potential that exists regarding the expansion we know is required. Senator Wall, Mr. Gaston and Ms Graham will be aware that the Climate Action Advisory Council brought in the OECD in 2021 to examine Ireland's transport policies. One output of the project was that the OECD pushed the Government in the sense that if we are to achieve what are hugely ambitious targets for 2030 and 2050, we need transformative policy. That is where we need to be. It needs to be supported by the ambition that will bring us to that point.

School transport has been mentioned on a few occasions in a few different guises in this conversation. We have to recognise that the school transport network is possibly the single biggest network that operates in rural Ireland, but it is not a transport network; it is part of an educational support scheme. It has been in place since 1967. From the OECD's perspective, there is a need for conversations and considerations in this regard. All this feeds into the merry-go-round here concerning bus stops and the seriousness of the situation. Again, it is a case of realising that the network that has traditionally operated in rural Ireland has not had the infrastructure in question.

There are many topics related to what we are discussing today, and the governance of the organisations is definitely one of them. We must ask whether we can have confidence that the skill sets exist, that capacity is being built and that the knowledge is available. In recent years, each company has adopted the charities governance code. One of the criteria is that you adopt a certain number of terms concerning the governance of the organisation. We are now coming to a set of circumstances in which most of the organisations will, either this year or next, be at a point of washout in that the terms of the people who were involved with us at the start will be completed. We are moving to both an opportunity and a challenge because the existing knowledge base is starting to decrease more and more. We must ask whether we can replace that with the relevant knowledge base that will carry us over the next 20 years.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Could I have the NTA's comments on the governance aspect?

Ms Anne Graham:

All we can comment on is the fact that the structures in place are the structures that are in place. We have a particular structure as a public body and are required to engage in public procurement when procuring a service. Therefore, we must follow the public procurement process to avail of the very valuable services offered by the transport co-ordination units we currently work with so closely. We have an obligation to do that. What we can consider are the terms of the contract, and we are doing so in respect of the next round of public procurement. Unfortunately, given the structures we have as a public body, that is the process we have to follow.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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On the question of demographics, does the NTA have figures on who is using the service?

Ms Bl?th?n McElligott:

We do have them but I would have to forward them to the committee. I do not have them here with me.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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They might be forwarded to the committee.

Ms Bl?th?n McElligott:

We have done some recent studies on this, so it is fresh information.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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That would be great.

Ms Bl?th?n McElligott:

As said, there has been quite a bit of change over time with a different group.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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We would all be very interested in seeing the information.

For supplementary questions, I will follow the same running order we had before, beginning with Senator Garvey. I ask members to be brief this time.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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To go back to the subject of bus poles, I hear what Mr. Gaston is saying, namely that capacity seems to be a huge issue. Has the Minister been asked for additional funding to get people on the ground? The local authorities are telling me they have new active travel staff but that none of their jobs requires them to have anything to do with bus stops. They are busy working on walking and cycling routes. If there is a need in this regard, it must be addressed. I know from talking to engineers that they do not have enough people on the ground doing physical work to keep up with all the demand, between active travel and everything else. Let us have a clear ask concerning what is needed. The Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is always the man for the funding of all these things. He cannot be accused of anything other than throwing a lot of money at this situation. What is actually needed? Is it more physically able people on the ground in local authority areas who are able to put in the poles? What is the solution? What is needed? Let us ask the Minister for it. The NTA and local authorities are the ones to make a request of, if this has not been done already.

My next point is on the Ennis bus. Of all the bus aspects, the process in this regard is unnecessarily long. What is the barrier? I am aware that the local authority is doing everything it can and wants the bus yesterday, so there is no blockage on its part in this instance, yet the NTA is saying it wants everything done and the infrastructure in before putting out the tender, which will take another nine months or a year. I asked why it was waiting until it was all done to put out the tender but it did not have an answer.

Are Connecting Ireland staff definitely sitting down with Irish Rail staff to consider existing and proposed services to ensure timetables are co-ordinated? I would like a clear answer on that.

What is the definition of rural transport? Is Ennis rural? Where does it stop? What is the witnesses' vision regarding it? Are the NTA witnesses saying the plan is to accept no bikes on buses unless they fold up? I believe this was said. If so, we are talking about Bromptons, which cost three or four grand. Fold-up bikes cannot be the only option. That would not be acceptable. We need proper, safe, secure shelters in which to lock up our bikes. I do not accept that we can never have bikes on buses. I have costings for bike rails on buses. It has been done in other jurisdictions.

I have been told the active travel fund is to go towards major towns only. The engineers have been told this at local authority level. Is it true that they cannot put any active travel funding towards rural towns and villages and that it can only go to urban areas? They were told funding could go only to Ennis and Shannon in Clare and that there was not a penny for anywhere else. What is the guidance on the rural bus stops? I would love to have a copy so we can get the ball rolling. I will do anything I can to help address the bus stop fiasco.

Ms Anne Graham:

I would not term it a "fiasco". We have to remember that, as in Ennis, we could have waited for the bus stops but the delivery of the services would have been delayed. From our point of view, it is important to get the services operating. We need the infrastructure but the important thing was to get the bus running. We now need to follow up as quickly as possible with the bus stop infrastructure, but I would not term that a "fiasco".

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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Even with the existing bus stops, the timetable is four years out of date.

Ms Anne Graham:

That is a separate matter that we have already addressed.

On the active travel fund, €300 million of funding has been made available by the Government, which we have now dispersed to all local authorities. There was a process because many rural local authorities had not got an active travel plan for their counties. They now have a plan for each county. Those that are being developed initially are probably the ones that will deliver the most for the most people. It is not that we do not fund in other smaller towns. It is possibly that the local authorities commenced in the larger towns to get delivery to more people. We want to ensure there are services right across the county and not just for major towns. That is not a hindrance. The local authorities are probably just working to see how they can get delivery in those major towns initially.

The matter of lock-up bikes and shelters for bikes is something we will take away and look at. As we know from the challenges associated with delivery of bus stops, there is an additional challenge in trying to find space at the side of a road for lock-ups. It is difficult even in urban areas in Dublin to find the space so it would be challenging-----

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I just mean in villages and towns for starters, where we do not have any lock-ups.

Ms Anne Graham:

It is challenging, even in urban areas in towns, to put in that physical infrastructure because it usually has to go in front of somebody's house, shop or something like that. Trying to find a location close to a bus stop can be challenging, although we are not saying we will not take it on. It has certainly been difficult for Dublin City Council to find those spaces to put lockable bike lock-ups on the street.

Mr. Gaston will answer the question on the distinction between rural areas.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

To be honest, we do not get hung up trying to define and decide. The same team that is looking at the Connecting Ireland plan is heavily involved in towns services planning as well because the two have to work together hand in hand. Clearly, if a Connecting Ireland service is being run, it will connect villages and settlements to towns. The same teams are looking at those together. We do not make a particular distinction in the funding. We are using the same funding that comes through Connecting Ireland to provide for town services as part of the package we have from the Government.

I will address a couple of other points the Senator raised. I am not currently constrained by funding for bus poles. When I say "resources", it is about getting the right engineers with the right skills into our organisation and others, and then getting the construction companies to respond to tenders. We are finding that the biggest challenge at present but we are working through that and taking a new approach or, at least, an enhanced approach over the next number of months to see if we can accelerate that. As I said, the thousand odd - we will come back with the exact number - is not enough. We need to find a way to speed that up.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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The local authorities told me that if Bus Éireann instructs them to do so, they will erect bus poles but they do not have manpower and that is part of the delay. Bus Éireann is not coming on board with where the poles should go either because the NTA is still unsure about the design. I am not sure where the whole thing is at.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

No, it is not so much that we are unsure. It is not just about putting in a bus pole. If hardstanding is to go in, somebody has to do some design work ahead of putting that in place and consider safety. A safety assessment needs to be carried out as well. The local authority needs to sign off on it and Bus Éireann would be involved, as would other operators. We are often in discussions with Local Link as well about the exact location of a bus pole so that it meets the needs of customers but is also sufficiently safe for where we plan to locate it.

On the question the Senator asked about Ennis, we will parallel activity. We will not wait until everything is done before we-----

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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Brilliant.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

-----go out to tender. We cannot go out to tender, however, until we know where the services are going to run.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

We need to establish-----

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I understand that completely. The parallel thing will be great.

Mr. Tim Gaston:

-----where the services will be, termini, turning points and so on, work out how many buses and give an estimate of the cost. We will go to the market for that. That is our plan.

The Senator raised a question regarding Irish Rail and integration, which has come up a couple of times. The same team that is managing Connecting Ireland has a joint working group with Irish Rail on its timetabling and network planning, which meets on a monthly basis. Some 19 of the services that went in last year were specifically targeted to timetable with trains. Where we are putting in a new service or enhancing an existing one, we will certainly take very clear note of the train service and the inter-regional bus services because, clearly, rocking up somewhere when the train has just gone is utterly frustrating. That is something the same team is working on.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Will the NTA clarify a matter with regard to the RRS? At present, who decides where the bus stops are and how far apart they are? Can buses stop on an on-demand system, as the old Bus Éireann buses did? We need clarity on that. We will not get all these bus stops overnight in most rural places so we need to know what the arrangement is in the meantime. I am getting conflicting replies.

I asked about the last bus to Clifden. The situation there is replicated throughout the country and is a good example. Clifden is a sizeable town servicing a very sizeable hinterland. Why does no bus for Clifden leave Galway city after 18.15?

I was very interested in one comment that was made. The NTA has a role in improving train services. I was fascinated by what was said regarding a minimum service being three services each way a day. Waterford and Limerick are reasonably sized towns and Clonmel, Tipperary town and Limerick Junction are on the route. There are two train services a day directly from Waterford to Limerick each way.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Is that to Limerick Junction?

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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To Limerick Junction. There are plenty of services from Limerick Junction on, but how does someone get there? If someone wants to go from Waterford to Limerick directly, via Limerick Junction, there are two services. Similarly the train to Ballybrophy, Roscrea, Nenagh, Birdhill, Casteconnell and Limerick goes through sizeable towns, and a sizable heavy urban area, but there are two services a day. If three is the minimum service requirement, how is it these areas are being held back with two? Has the NTA been pounding and banging the door down at Iarnród Éireann to get it to three, four, five or six? My belief is there should be ten services a day each way on these railway lines. As the infrastructure is so expensive, why not use it? As I said, it was fascinating that three services were mentioned as a minimum but these areas only have two. It is not like a rural bus route. Somebody has invested huge money in upgrading the tracks and all the infrastructure and then there are no trains. I am sure the Leas-Chathaoirleach will fully agree with me on this.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Wait until the Deputy hears about the services between Rosslare and Waterford.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I am also very keen on that, as the Leas-Chathaoirleach knows. I cannot understand why that was closed in the first place.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Did the representatives want to respond to the Deputy's points?

Ms Anne Graham:

Did the Deputy ask about the Citylink service?

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I am asking about any bus service. I do not care. People do not care. They just want to get a bus from Galway. The last Citylink bus to Clifden is at 17:30 and the last Bus Éireann service is at 18:15. Buses later on go as far as Oughterad but not Clifden.

Ms Anne Graham:

I cannot talk about what exactly is planned under Connecting Ireland. Our ambition is to do a lot more frequency and much later services in Galway, as we have done, as the Deputy said, with the Oughterad service. I have to make a distinction between those services that are licensed and those we contract. Citylink is a licensed service and it has to make the commercial decision on whether it wishes to extend into the evening. Under Connecting Ireland, we do not look at services in an operator-specific way. We look at a service from a town to another town and what the level of service we want to deliver there is. If a commercial operator is operating, it is a little more challenging to deliver a service when a commercial service is already running alongside that.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The point is that after 6 p.m. neither Bus Éireann or Citylink run a service to Clifden. It is not a disadvantage to have these licensed services and subsidised services running on the same routes.

Ms Anne Graham:

They should not be.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Or whatever way it is. I do not know what the Bus Éireann service to Clifden is. All I know is the people do not care who runs the service.

They do not care whether it is a licensee or PSO or whatever.

Ms Anne Graham:

That is the point I am making.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Their other question is what the fare is. There is no service in the evening after 6.15 p.m. The NTA's complications are not their problem. They want to know when and how long does it take for the penny to drop that a service is needed to Clifden after 6 p.m..

Ms Anne Graham:

As I have said, under the Connecting Ireland plan, our ambition is to have a much more frequent service from Galway to Clifden. We have an implementation plan that has broken it down because we can only implement a certain number each year. I can check back with the team to see when any implementation is proposed to improve those particular services that are contracted by the NTA on the Galway to Clifden corridor.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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What about trains?

Ms Anne Graham:

The minimum services per day I was talking about earlier was related to bus services because that is what we were considering regarding Connecting Ireland. As Mr. Gaston said, we are looking at what the timetables should be for the rail services nationally but what can be delivered in the short term is based on the resources - trains and train drivers - that we have available. Additional funding is also needed in this area. The funding was not provided to put on additional rail services this year. Our focus for today was on bus services and improving our Local Link services.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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What about the location of the bus stops?

Mr. Tim Gaston:

It is not that there would be a given distance between bus stops because it depends on where people are living and where they want to board. There is not a hard and fast rule about what the distance between bus stops should be. We would prefer to see the network of bus poles in place and the regular services only using those official bus poles. Clearly, that would be a better place to be. As we have said a few times, we are playing catch-up in getting bus poles in place which does leave it, to some extent, to the discretion of drivers if they want to stop somewhere to allow a passenger to board or alight. Custom and practice have generally established where those are around the country. We know that to be the case. We would like to get as quickly as we can to where we have a network of official bus stops for the regular scheduled services.

Regarding the demand responsive transport or app-based DRT, we would like to be able to have a network of what we would call virtual bus stops, which will not be bus poles because that could be almost every crossroads and there will need to be guidance to the operators as to where it is safe to stop. We will need to make sure that we are within the bounds of the legislation. That is one of the strands of activity in the programme, to make sure that we are within the appropriate legislation as to how we are going operate the services.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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That concludes this morning's consideration of rural public transport. The takeaway is that a great deal has been achieved in a short time but we still have much work to do. The committee intends to return to this topic at a later stage. I thank the witnesses from Irish Rural Link and the NTA for their time this morning. I now propose that the committee goes into private session to consider other business. Is that agreed? Agreed.