Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Independent Group for tabling this motion. It allows me the opportunity to highlight some public transport difficulties that people in County Wexford are facing.

I had occasion during the summer to write to Bus Éireann regarding the high number of cancellations on Wexford bus services. A good example of this serious disruption occurred in the period from 9 to 25 July when a total of 38 services to or from Wexford were cancelled, often at short notice. These cancellations caused significant disruption for many passengers, in particular those who made Bus Éireann a central part of their plans to get to and from Dublin Airport during the holiday season. I understand that the 6 a.m. departure from Dublin Airport to Wexford on 23 July was cancelled and that a tweet to inform customers of this cancellation was not posted until six hours later at 12 midday. This practice was repeated many other times, with a public announcement not being made until after the scheduled departure times had passed. The sheer volume of cancellations and the provision of late notice of same shows blatant disregard for customers by Bus Éireann and brings into question the effectiveness of contingency planning at Bus Éireann. People need an explanation of why so many services in Wexford were cancelled. They also need to know how Bus Éireann intends to prevent this problem from recurring so that County Wexford commuters and holidaymakers can have confidence in the service that is supposed to be provided.

Government policy has been aimed towards moving people away from cars and onto public transport, and both the carrot and stick are being used. The carrot is the reduction in fares and the stick is the increase in the carbon tax, making travelling by private car more expensive. In many parts of rural Ireland, the public transport system is not a viable alternative to the private car. Random and short-notice cancellations do nothing to promote public transport as a feasible alternative in County Wexford.

Another area of public transport that is wholly inadequate in County Wexford is the rail service. Journey times by rail from Wexford to Dublin are no better from Wicklow onwards than they were in the late 1800s, with the Wexford service often crawling from Greystones to Connolly Station due to the timetable dispatching slow-running DART trains in the way of the Wexford service. If you are in Wexford, the only way you have to get to any part of the country by rail is to go via Dublin. We have a rail line from Wexford to Waterford that has been lying idle since 2010. Irish Rail ran that line into the ground until it had driven so many passengers away that it closed the line in 2010, when the Green Party was in government.

Turning back to the Rosslare line, the earliest train to arrive in Wexford town from Dublin on a weekday gets in at 12.07 p.m. There are no morning arrivals. On a weekday, there are five and a half hours between trains. There is a departure from Rosslare at 7.20 a.m. but no further departures until 12.55 p.m.

I welcome attempts to incentivise people to use public transport through low fares, but in addition to those, the housing crisis and people's inability to find accommodation in our cities means that, now more than ever, we need to consider a high-speed rail network, starting with the Wexford to Dublin line.

Approximately 10,000 commuters leave Wexford daily to head to work, mostly by car. Providing an incentive to use rail would mean we could get people out of their cars, and this could include the provision of reliable services and faster journey times. We also need high-speed services with better connectivity around the country.

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