Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The rural transport scheme is essential and has evolved to fill the gap in local services, about which Deputy Robert Troy spoke, to transport people to bigger towns to access basic services, including medical services, go shopping or simply get out of the house and meet friends. It has been adopted wonderfully in many rural areas and I am sure the Minister of State has had a chance to see this in recent years, with people being brought to community centres to have their lunch and some social interaction. That is what it is about; it is about giving people in rural areas the ability to make the most of their community, not to be prisoners is their own home. We must make sure the roll-out of the new Kelly bus dovetails with the travel pass scheme. We must make sure it does not undermine the scheme and that when the review is published, the new so-called transport initiative is put in place and that the travel pass is not restricted as a result of their having access to the new rural transport scheme. I have no doubt some civil servant has thought of this already and that it is be done to save costs.

Many media organisations have been working on this issue in recent weeks and Age Action has taken it up as its main campaigning issue. It wants to have it nailed down before the summer recess, bearing in mind that it will be too late to tackle it in September when many of the budget decisions are taken. This is the time to do it. I am sorry if we are inconveniencing Government backbenchers by forcing them to come here. The Minister of State was not here to listen to a lot of what we had to put up with. His colleagues are very distressed about having to come here and have accused us of scaremongering, which is a bit rich, particularly coming from those who were on this side of the House in the last Dáil. We are not scaremongering, rather we are seeking to defend the scheme which has inestimable value. Admittedly, it has a monetary cost, but in terms of the monetary return and, most importantly, its inestimable social value, it needs to be defended. We are seeking to defend it and send a message to those who abuse it. If people are abusing it, they are ruining it for everyone else and it is their fault that it is under review. If they are abusing it in terms of their right to use it, they should cop on because their abuse of it and such fraud are costing those who want and need the scheme. It will eventually cost them some day. That message must go out in terms of the review if it is to be serious.

As I said before the Minister of State came into the Chamber, it is difficult for us to accept assurances about the scheme from a Government that has destroyed the household benefits package, the lineage of which probably dates back as far as the travel pass, that has acted in the way it has in respect of prescription charges and that stood by while various taxes were imposed on older people. Furthermore, in her first budget the Minister of State's new party leader told women who had left work to rear their family and then returned that they had lost pension entitlements which they otherwise would have had. That is the currency in which the Tánaiste has traded and the reason people are sceptical about her assurances that this is only a review and that there will not be a change. She has sold them a pup far too often and they are not going to buy another one from her.

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