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

As the Deputy said, NPHET is meeting today and it will issue a letter to the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. I look forward to seeing its advice. My view, which I am happy to share, is that we should start immediately by removing the requirement for schoolchildren to wear masks in school. It was introduced for good public health reasons, but there are also good reasons for them not having to wear masks, for the health of children in a wider context. I hope that can be done straight away.

I have the same view with regard to retail and public transport. I believe we should go from a mandatory system towards a public health guidance to continue to wear masks. It makes good public health sense. I would advise anyone to continue with it for the immediate future because we still have Covid-19 at quite a scale. However, the time for mandatory conditions is part of the unwinding. I will listen and heed. Obviously, we will take NPHET's views into account, but my view is that we should further the loosening of the restrictions in place. I listen with respect to the teachers unions and the public transport and bus workers unions, but my view is that while I expect the vast majority of people will continue to wear masks for the immediate future, we should not continue it as a mandatory system.

We want people back on public transport. The numbers are back to about 60% of pre-Covid levels. It varies across the country. The long-distance commuting numbers are not back. It will be no surprise to hear that. Some of the regional cities' numbers are back. Some of the new services in Louth and Navan and some of the other services are up way beyond what the expectations were. The cost-of-living measure introduced last week of cutting public transport fares by 20% was not just for cost-of-living reasons, urgent as they are, it was also to try to give public transport a boost at this time, so we will not see the road space taken up by people going back to cars. We want to encourage people back onto public transport. It is safe and we want to get the numbers back up.

I had a meeting last week with the chief executive officers of Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann, Irish Rail and the National Transport Authority, NTA, to impress on them the need for us to be quick on this. The end of April is the timeline I was hoping would see both the introduction of the new 50% reduction in youth travel fares and the 20% reduction in the public service obligation, PSO, public transport measures. The CEOs say, and they are the experts in the area, that it typically takes six, eight or ten weeks to change all the ticketing machines and all the tariffs. I told them we have to do it and that I want them to do it by the end of April. They assured me they will do everything to deliver it in that timeframe.

It is more difficult with the commercial operators because we do not set, monitor or regulate their fares in the same way. That presents a significant difficulty in how we implement both the PSO and the youth travel card.

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