Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Accessible, reliable, affordable and safe travel is what commuters want and need in north Kildare. Instead, we have workers from Prosperous and Clane receiving late warnings from work, with one constituent receiving a final late warning. Parents must take time off work to get their children to Maynooth University for lectures or laboratory work. Mothers - it is always mothers - in Straffan and Celbridge - say they are worried that they will have to give up work because there is no place on the school bus. Even after all the free places were announced, it turned out there were no bus places for their children at all. Commuters are either left on the side of the road in Leixlip or Maynooth when the bus grinds past full, or else it does not turn up at all.

A few weeks ago, I raised public transport with the Minister for Transport at the climate committee. I also discussed a Topical Issue with the Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, a few weeks ago. I raised the issue at the Joint Committee on Gender Equality. I also raised it with the Taoiseach again this morning. The reason for that is because public transport affects all aspects of our lives: how we get to work, how we get to school and how we get to health appointments. It affects people's job opportunities. It also affects every Department, yet there is no overall vision of how the Departments should work together to make people's lives easier.

We had youth leaders from across the State at a climate committee meeting last Friday in the Seanad. All of them mentioned the lack of public transport in their area. I asked them if they intended to buy a car in the next ten years or if they thought they would need a car. None of them said they would want a car, but that is not the way it goes if public transport is not up to the job. In contrast, our plan would make public transport the no-brainer option because it would make public transport accessible, affordable, reliable and safe. We simply cannot depend on the private sector to deliver a public transport system. We are in a climate emergency and the State must step up. Public transport is where it is at.

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