Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I understand the complexity and difficulty in trying to set fares. Where it falls down is where one tries to set these concentric circles. Dublin and the greater Dublin area did not develop in a grid like New York city or something like that. We have population centres such as Skerries, which is just outside that concentric circle, Maynooth, which has just slipped into that concentric circle, and Greystones, which has just been left out. The NTA applied a strategy as the crow flies from O'Connell Bridge. That is where it worked out its distances from. Rail track miles have nothing to do with how crows fly. I can understand how that might have something to do with buses, because buses take a meandering kind of route or try to pick up in places as they go, so as a crow flies is probably a good metric to use for a bus journey. All rail track in this country is measurable, however. Rail charts will show the exact distance between stations. It is much easier to work out the distance between rail stations than it is on those bus routes. I do not understand why O'Connell Bridge was taken as the datum point for that.

It does not matter if somebody travelling is a Greystones resident or a Maynooth resident. I am not doing this on a constituency basis. If I am a tourist who gets on in Pearse and travels to Greystones, I am charged €3.90 if I have a Leap card. I am only charged €2 if I go to Maynooth and I travel the exact same distance. There is not even a variation in that. Those services start from and terminate in Pearse, which is the central Dublin station. I really do not understand. I think the NTA has not lived up to its objectives that it set, which were that rail fares should increase in line with distance travelled. They clearly do not. Does the Minister have power, within his ministerial duties, to go back to the NTA and say it has not delivered on these objectives for the fare strategy and that we have people travelling the exact same distance who are paying twice the price? I do not think that is fair at all.