Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister said in her statement that during the recent red alert, businesses were asked, in the context of the constraints on public transport, to consider whether people should be asked to go to work but the difficulty was that many businesses insisted that people go to work. People have contacted me who were told to be sure to get to work but when they arrived there were very few customers and then they had no way of getting home. There were no taxis available and no way for them to get home. A young woman who works in a city centre restaurant left work at 1 a.m. on Saturday. There were no taxis or regular buses running but the airport bus was running from the city centre. She got on the bus, paid €7 and asked the driver to drop her off near her home which was on the route to the airport. The driver said "No", that the bus was travelling non-stop to the airport. She told him it was an emergency and pleaded with him but he told her that he could not stop to let her off. She had to get off the bus and walk almost two and a half miles to her home. That is the kind of problem that arose because no instruction was given, not only in terms of people getting to work but also in terms of getting people who were at work home again.

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