Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy O'Rourke, for bringing this important motion forward. The constituency I represent, Carlow-Kilkenny, is a good mix of urban and rural. While it is a fantastic place to live and work we are certainly lacking public transport. It is an integral part of a functioning rural community and has an important role in reducing emissions, which we are all apparently in favour of, though when it comes to actual practice it is hard to know whether we are.

As part of the recent budget ,the young adult travel card was announced. It was welcome and I though it a positive move. However, for rural communities where we do not have very much public transport it excludes private bus operators. I am obviously an advocate for public transport but in some of our communities where we do not have that, to not roll it out to those operators is a missed opportunity. We would really would benefit from that. Students from counties Carlow and Kilkenny would especially benefit from that as we have had a recent announcement about the institutes of technology in Carlow and Waterford amalgamating to form a technological university for the south east. It would be hugely beneficial for students if they could avail of this but for the most part there are only private providers in the constituency at the moment.

It is ironic that our Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications is currently at the COP flying the flag for Ireland and all we are going to do to encourage people out of their cars and onto public transport yet it is certainly lacking in this constituency. I add that as somebody who travels to Kilkenny on the three days we are up here, if I were to rely on public transport I would have to leave here at 6 p.m. to get the 6.30 p.m. train, as it is the last train to Kilkenny. It is incredible to think that is the situation in 2021.

I briefly mention the situation in Carlow with the bus service. There has finally been an announcement it is going to go out to tender but it is not going to launch until next autumn. Imagine a town like Carlow still has no bus service and we only recently got a proper bus service in Kilkenny city. I am going to run out of time very shortly so I again commend my colleague and urge everybody to support the motion. On rural communities, the Minister of State is in one himself and it really is important we have good public transport and that there are options for people.

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