John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)

I am sure the Deputy will. Applications on hand before the suspension of the scheme will continue to be processed. Deputy Ring might have noticed that approximately half of those have been cleared. I hope that gives him some confidence in the future of that scheme.

To return to the matter in hand, all of us here with an interest in rural development issues know how important an issue transport is for rural areas. The Government's rural transport programme, which is the responsibility of my colleague, the Minister for Transport, aims to deal with what was previously the unmet public transport needs in rural Ireland. Substantial funding of €11 million is provided to support this service under the rural transport programme.

As Minister with responsibility for rural development, Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív very much welcomes the service this programme provides to our rural areas and the fact that it has been expanding its services over the years. Given his responsibility, he was also conscious of the specific issue of evening and night transport services for rural areas which he examined in conjunction with the Department of Transport, in 2007.

As a result of that consideration, the pilot rural transport night scheme was launched in 2007 and the Minister was glad to be able to fund it as a pilot exercise from within his Department. However, the Deputies will appreciate that the mainstream provision of transport services, including rural transport, is a matter for the Minister for Transport and Department of Transport and, accordingly, it was always the intention that the more limited resources of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs could be used to support this pilot initiative.

Our focus with this pilot scheme was to facilitate a limited number of the groups who already operate under the rural transport programme to run an evening and night service and to have the opportunity to look at the impact on the ground of meeting the needs of night time services in rural Ireland. The pilot service, even though operated in seven areas only, has allowed rural dwellers to get involved and participate in various activities in the evening that they may not have had the opportunity to in the scheme's absence.

The seven groups who have operated the pilot scheme were: West Cork Rural Transport; Avondhu Development Group in East Cork; Meath Accessible/Kilnaleck Community Cavan; County Sligo Leader Partnership; Tumna Shannon Development Company Roscommon; Síob Teoranta Donegal; and Laois Trip.

The Department will have provided funding of approximately €950,000 from the commencement of the pilot scheme in early summer 2007 up to 10 July next when the pilot will cease. The experience of my own Department in operating the pilot scheme, in conjunction with Pobal, who also manage the rural transport programme, has been that it has had a beneficial impact and has been endorsed by those involved in rural transport.

That is why, in the context of the pilot scheme coming to an end on 10 July next, the Minister recently met with representatives of the groups involved with the pilot scheme and with Pobal. At this meeting the groups' experiences of operating the pilot evening scheme was discussed. It discussed how it might be incorporated into the rural transport programme going forward.

There is to be further examination of this issue at a follow-up meeting this week between the groups and Pobal. Of course, the challenge will be to deliver the services within existing resources, but I should emphasise that the rural transport programme gives flexibility for the groups to identify the priority transport needs of their own areas, in terms of routes, frequency and timing of services. Neither the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Ó Cuív, nor the Minister for Transport seeks to tell the groups what services they should provide; this is something into which they have a strong input.

Overall, Deputy Ó Cuív is glad to see the further consideration that evening services are now getting within the rural transport programme, following on from the pilot he was able to fund. Historically, services under the rural transport programme have been generally delivered between morning and late afternoon to reflect local needs prioritisation with the available resources. The Minister understands that some groups provide evening services within the rural transport programme and he would welcome changes that would further extend the service to evening-night time routes where this is both needed and possible.

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