Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start on a positive note. For the first time, I will be able to walk my three and a half-year-old son to preschool this September because we are availing of a €12 billion investment from central government into connecting Glanmire to the city and Glanmire to east Cork. We are seeing the benefits of active travel and the extension of greenways and cycleways in my area, which is very welcome.

I echo concerns that were mentioned by Deputy Ó Cuív earlier about the frequency of services. As I said, I am lucky to live on the Cork to Cobh railway line. I regularly use the train heading up from Little Island or Glounthaune into the city. Given the Government investment of €185 million to that line to make it fully electrified and fully accessible, in a couple of years' time we will have a train every five minutes. This will be massive for the area. Unfortunately, there are many rural areas in my constituency such as Grenagh, Carrignavar, Whitechurch and Upper Glanmire where the bus service is so infrequent it is like apples and oranges when compared with the offering of public transport on both sides. I am aware that we cannot have trains on everybody's doorstep but, at the same time, in those rural areas in particular we need to have a greater emphasis on public transport in the context of our bus provision.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the debacle that is Dublin Airport. I believe it is over-simplistic for people to suggest diverting flights to Cork or Shannon but the Government and the DAA should be doing their best to subsidise additional flights out of those regional airports. Perhaps in the medium term it is one way that we could actually alleviate some of the pressure off Dublin. In the shorter term, something has to be looked at in the area of security and how quickly people can get through those channels in Dublin Airport.

The reduction in fares that was handed out some weeks ago is to be broadly welcomed. It is great to see people using that train line, which has been there most of my lifetime. I see people using it for the first time now, and using the buses that are going in and out of the city quite frequently. It is now cheaper and more competitively priced for people to leave the car at home, not have to pay the parking charges in the city, or wherever it is they are off to, and to get the public transport option. This needs to be further built on going into future budgets. It is one part of our policy where we need to sweat the assets as best we can. If these buses are running on these different lines, we need to make sure that they are full and operating at capacity to get the true benefit from them.

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