Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about this very important subject because we do not have public transport in many places in rural Kerry. A few years ago the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said that one car in a village would service six or eight different families. Is that the ideal that he is still going by or that the Government is still going by? I welcome the eight new routes that should be allocated to Kerry, including from places like Fenit to Farranfore Airport three times per day.

However, much of the carbon tax that is being collected, after the €225 million that was given away the other day, is for new bus after new bus for Dublin city. Double decker buses and other long buses in Dublin have big signs on their left-hand corners warning people to look out for the tail swing. Buses are so big and plentiful that there is hardly room for anything else on the roads. If you watch outside the Dáil gate the buses are going by one after another and there are only two or three people at most inside any of them. Places like Gneeveguilla, Scartaglin and Cordal are far away. The Government is saying that 500,000 people will be walking by 2030 but can you imagine walking from places like that to work or cycling from Gneeveguilla or Scartaglin, Lauragh, The Black Valley or Bonane? That is not on. I know it might not be by choice and that the Government is tied on to the Green Party but that is the decision that was made and that is the worry I have.

On school transport, no child should be left behind if he or she is more than 1 km from a school. I mention our road network and the local improvement scheme, LIS. We still have 676 schemes on the list. The people in Kerry are entitled to a good road to their doors the same as the people in Dublin 4. These are public roads; not private ones. They are public roads that were never taken in charge. We need a bypass for Killarney because it has over 18,000 vehicle movements every day. That is too much, the people of Killarney are being choked up and it could affect our tourism product.

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