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

There has been a substantial increase in funding for Local Link services since 2016, going from €12.2 million in 2016 to over €28 million in 2021, comprising rural transport programme, RTP, current and capital funding, Covid-related funding and PSO funding for rural regular services. The additional funding since 2016 has enabled the introduction of 85 new rural regular service routes, as well as improvements to demand responsive transport, DRT, services and the piloting of evening and night-time services in certain rural areas which have now been mainstreamed. The new rural regular services operate at least five times per day over a schedule of five, six or seven days per week. They are specifically designed to ensure connectivity with other public transport services and better linkage of services between and within towns and villages.

Bus Éireann operates a substantial PSO business under contract with the NTA, providing subvented bus services outside Dublin and in regional and rural locations throughout the country. It also has a separate, commercially-run business, Expressway, which operates a number of interregional bus routes.

The Covid-19 health emergency brought a profound and swift shock to the public transport sector. Public transport’s designation as an essential service throughout the pandemic means that although fare revenues have collapsed, most of the shortfall has been met by the Government in order to meet our broader policy objectives. In 2020, we spent over €620 million supporting PSO services. For 2021, over €670 million has been provided in funding in order to ensure the existing level of public transport services is kept. By comparison, the level of PSO and Local Link funding provided in 2019 was in the region of €300 million. Furthermore, in June 2020 the Government decided to introduce new, temporary financial support for certain licensed services provided by commercial bus operators to ensure the continued operation of these essential services.

That was the key joined-up thinking on maintaining, developing and broadening out public transport services for all parts of our country. As I told Deputy O'Rourke earlier, we must make sure we meet the needs of every different community and balance that funding throughout the country as we best can.

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