Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Like my colleagues, I am very disappointed that the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is not here today. Regardless of anything else, he knew his time slot the same as everybody else, and he could have been here. Perhaps transport is not something he is interested in. He is not connecting Ireland, as he promised. He is disconnecting Ireland. That is what he has done. So many speakers have been talking about train services and even electric trains. We do not even know what that means in west Cork. We cannot get a bus service. The Government is two and a half years in office. It has failed the people for two and a half years. For two and a half years, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party have failed to provide a proper bus service for the people of Dunmanway to Clonakilty or from Clonakilty to Dunmanway through Ballynacarriga. The Government has failed to provide a bus service to Goleen and back. West Cork Connect put forward a plan to the National Transport Authority recently to do it free of charge and it refused it. The Government continues to disconnect rural Ireland and it does not care. It does not understand, or it does not give a damn. How are the people of Eyeries, Allihies, Ardgroom and Castletownbere going to survive? They deserve a service the same as the people of Dublin, as do the people of Goleen, Dunmanway and Clonakilty, but they are not getting the service because the Government is failing 100% to deliver for the people.

The 20% decrease in transport fares, with a 50% decrease for young people, is a great idea, but not for the people of rural Ireland. The private operator which carries the biggest percentage of people - I do not know how many million people it carries every year - cannot apply for the 20% or 50% decrease, so the young people who leave Skibbereen and Bantry every day to head to Cork or Dublin will not get a brown cent of that back into their pocket. This is a disgrace for the Government. It is a complete attack on the people of rural Ireland.

There has been talk about the crisis in Dublin Airport. We have no crisis in Cork Airport. If the people are brought down to Cork, we will make sure they fly out on time. The great people of Cork Airport will sort it out, and the same is true for the people in Kerry and Mayo, but Dublin Airport has made an absolute shambles of it. Nobody is answering any questions about what is going wrong. We are only going around in circles in recent weeks. I could spend two hours talking about the issue this evening if I had time.

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