James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending to hear some of the points I want to make on transport. During a Topical Issue debate before the Dáil rose for the summer, I raised with the Minister traffic congestion around Castlemartyr, which is causing immense problems for the community in Youghal and Midleton. The national development plan review will come up shortly. I reiterate that this project should be put in the national development plan as it is vital to the economic future of the communities I represent and that I previously represented as a councillor before I was elected to Dáil Éireann.

A number of issues in the Cork East constituency need to be addressed, including the ability of commuters using public transport services to avail of the green zone fare in the Cork region and Cork county. There is significant discrimination affecting those in large towns in the vicinity of Cork city that have very good public transport links to the city. Towns such as Midleton, Mallow, Fermoy and Youghal have good bus services. Some of those towns also have rail connections. There is a big discrepancy in the fare structure in place and whether people can utilise the Leap card service. If we want to get cars off the road, we need to make public transport affordable. For all areas outside the green zone area in Cork East. that is a major issue. It is extremely expensive for people who want to commute on public transport from towns such as Mitchelstown and Youghal to Cork.

Another issue is coming up repeatedly. We are getting calls, texts and social media messages sometimes in the middle of the night from people who have been left standing at bus stops throughout the constituency because the public transport services are deeply unreliable and are insufficient to meet demand.

I want to highlight another issue with Bus Éireann. Parents of children with serious cognitive disabilities who are attending day services are finding it almost impossible, in particular in Youghal, to get their children on to bus services, which is deeply concerning. I would like the Minister to make an effort with Bus Éireann to see if a small number of seats could be reserved for children attending day services in rural communities such as the one I represent so that they can travel between Youghal and Dungarvan. That is a very valid point raised with me by the Youghal autism group. I commend them on the work they are doing. This is an easy problem to solve and it would make an enormous difference to those families to know their children would have a place on the Bus Éireann service.

It is deeply annoying that Bus Éireann operates an Expressway service, which is a commercial service, and also the PSO services. There is a significant price discrepancy between the two. On the one hand, the NTA advises us that it can operate these PSO services with greatly inflated prices, in some cases double what is being charged on the Expressway services, while, on the other, Bus Éireann claims it can operate a commercial Bus Éireann service at half the rate, which apparently is making a profit. The company is hiding behind the excuse of having them under so-called promotional fares, which should be full-time fares for the community.

We are asleep at the wheel in respect of the opportunities to take cars off the road in Cork city and county. Thousands of people commute from east Cork to Cork city for work every day, but they must do so in their private cars because there is no reliable and affordable public transport option.

I said to the Minister on a previous occasion in the Dáil that if one goes down to the Jack Lynch tunnel in the evening, one will see that the number of vehicles trying to exit the south side of Cork city on a daily basis is absolutely frightening. There are almost 100,000 vehicles using the South Ring Road interchange with the M25 at Dunkettle. It is staggering that there is no public transport service on this route, which connects universities, colleges, hospitals and everything else in the southern part of Cork city. For the tens of thousands of people who live in the east Cork area, there are no public transport services going under the tunnel to link up communities like those in Mahon Point, Douglas and Ringaskiddy, where there are thousands of people working in multinational companies, retail, health services and so on. It would be a simple thing to begin the process of addressing these problems. Will the Minister commit to undertaking a feasibility study with a view to ensuring these issues are examined and to see whether potential solutions can be found?

I thank the Minister for listening to the points I have raised and I look forward to engaging with him on all of them.

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