Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this opportunity to respond to this debate on behalf of the Government. The Government is conscious of the needs of older people. It also fully understands that a wide range of other groups, including unemployed people, parents, carers and people with disabilities, depend on the welfare budget for vital support. We know that social protection schemes, from pensions to child benefit and from free travel to rent supplement, play a pivotal role in alleviating poverty and cushioning people from the worst effects of rising unemployment and falling incomes. In doing so, they help to promote social solidarity. A recent report indicates that social transfers helped to lift almost nine out of ten older people out of poverty.

I want to respond to some of the commentary from across the floor during the course of the debate. It was said that recommendations had been leaked and that the Government was considering a number of specific changes. The review is not yet completed. The Tánaiste and the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport have received no such recommendations and the Government is not considering any specific changes to the free travel scheme. I will repeat what the Tánaiste said last night. We make no apology for reviewing a scheme that is almost 50 years old. Every scheme must be open to review, improvement, better management and more effective delivery.

The free travel scheme has been remarkably robust since its inception in 1967. The fact that a quarter of the population has some access to free travel is unusual in international terms and it must be paid for. The freeze on funding for the scheme introduced by the previous Government in 2010 has placed pressure on its operation as eligible passenger numbers have continued to rise. Deputy O'Dea said the freeze was a once-off budgetary measure. It was in fact part of the previous Government's four-year plan, the programme for national recovery. Deputy Ó Cuív said last night that the freeze on funding imposed by the last Government had no impact on customers. He implied that transport operators should be happy to carry passengers without adequate and fair recompense. Operators must, of course, continue to be paid for carriage. Owing to the freeze introduced in 2010, new routes or operators have not been admitted to the scheme and the funding that operators have received has been frozen, even though fares may have increased. This is the issue that Deputy McConalogue needs to address in relation to the matters in Donegal to which he referred. The effect of the freeze has been that in a small number of cases, where an operator has withdrawn from a particular route and been replaced by another operator, the new operator is not admitted to the scheme. Although I am not well versed about the situation in Donegal, it would appear to me that this is what occurred in that regard.

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