Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I commit to that.

In an ordinary year the Government would provide about €300 million in public service obligation supports to the public transport system. This year we will provide that, but we will also provide an additional €460 million because carriers have lost fare revenues owing to the Covid restrictions. If necessary, we will do the same again next year.

Bus Éireann has announced that it is seeking to withdraw from four of its intercity express services to consolidate the other 14 services and to provide additional bus services in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Meath and Louth. That was a decision by the company over how it wants to meet what it sees as growing demand and areas where it was suffering significant losses. It was not because of a lack of financial support or a lack of willingness to support public transport services. There will be an increased employment of drivers and a redeployment of drivers on existing routes. As I told the company - I commit to it here - if there is any loss of service with any town left out or left behind, we will apply the public service obligation to ensure no town is left behind.

This was the commercial side of its bus operations. It was not under the public service route network, but that does not matter. We still need to ensure every town is connected. Indeed, we seek to expand the public transport network. Under the towns first policy, we can use the strange opportunities Covid presents to change our transport system away from long-distance car commuting towards having local bus services. People who are able to work remotely without the need to commute will have good quality local bus services in their own town as well as between cities.

Obviously Covid restrictions have presented considerable difficulty for school transport. With the recommencement of schools, the Government set up the school transport system to work effectively with student safety in mind. The Department of Education and Skills provided funding for all the proper sanitisation and hygiene requirements on buses. Because the numbers spiked about a week before the schools came back, we had to revise the plans further. We did not have the 1,600 drivers needed and the extra coaches to meet the higher standards that the health authorities required. The Minister for Education and Skills has been working on that. We will introduce it shortly. I estimate it will cost over €100 million to further protect and improve the school bus transport system.

Everyone in the House knows there are difficulties with that system. About 20,000 students get buses in a separate private system. There are issues with concession tickets, none of which are optimal. There is no lack of support, no lack of commitment and no lack of funding. Many hundreds of millions of euro of additional funding will be allocated to public transport this year and we will do the same again next year.

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