Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this very important issue. I am delighted the Minister of State is in the House. In the previous response the Minister mentioned strengthening connections in rural Ireland. Ring a Link is a three county project between south Tipperary, Carlow and Kilkenny. It fits the bill neatly for what the Minister is trying to do in reducing the number of rural transport outfits in the country. I agree there are far too many. Thanks to Fr. Gerard O'Connor, Fr. Pat Condon and others who championed the rural transport issue, we have one of the most successful schemes in the country. The Minister visited the headquarters and I am glad that he did. He knows what we have available. He also knows the initiatives we have taken, the line management, the staff, the drivers, the board members and the working group in south Tipperary, Carlow and Kilkenny. I happen to be the chairperson of the working group in south Tipperary. The Minister wants to amalgamate groups around the country, with which I agree, but we have a ready-made template for amalgamation in Carlow, Kilkenny and south Tipperary.

Ring a Link has made a bid to have north Tipperary included and it already offers services there, although not many. That is not our fault. We have state-of-the-art booking technology which can trace people to their front doors and which has the capability of communicating GPS messages to bus drivers.

There is a need for the three-county model to be retained, particularly as huge investments have been made in the bus fleet and in drivers and other staff, and because we now have a knowledge about what rural transport involves. We are entitled to a slice of the cake. An attempt was made via the McCarthy report to get rid of our model but we fought it off. However, we are obliged to make cuts of 7% and, despite the difficulties involved, we will deliver these next year. The template we have in place is a model for the remainder of the country. Removing south Tipperary from the equation and obliging it to put in place its own service would give rise to a significant cost because there would be a need to purchase new buses and booking technology, employ new drivers, etc. That would make a nonsense of what it is proposed to do nationally. Let us be honest about it. The Government is seeking amalgamations. We have not amalgamated but we want to extend the service to the entire county. We have no problem in that regard.

The old adage "Where Tipperary leads, Ireland follows," remains appropriate. This is a pilot project but it is ready made for adoption elsewhere. The Minister of State should forget the personality clashes between the two of us and the fact that he serves north Tipperary.

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