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

I will spend the money on public transport all right; the Deputy need not worry about that. I absolutely agree with him. This must be key for the ordinary Joe and Josephine on the side of the road. We only started this last year so we are learning. The first two were in counties Leitrim and Kerry, down on the Dingle Peninsula, where really good lessons were learned. In Leitrim we learned that we can integrate Local Link and other public transport services with the health transport needs we have. As I said in the Dáil yesterday, I would argue that in the review of school bus services, we should link that in to see whether we can design systems in a way that ensures we get a better school transport system, a better health transport system and a better public transport system. That is where I think we are. Let us test and learn to see as we go forward how we can improve and expand. Integrating a variety of different services is one of the ways of doing it.

Local Link plays a vital role and provides a really important service. We need to promote it better. There are many services that people do not know about. We need to work on the bus stops, which is not hugely expensive. Money is tight, but we can have a small sign attached to a wall so people know it is the Local Link stop. We can create stops in a creative way. That is where we need to go here. We need to evolve services in new ways and do things differently so we can provide public transport around the country.

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