Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many people from rural communities such as my own constituency of Cavan-Monaghan who, through necessity, commute to the large urban centres such as Dublin, are heavily reliant on private cars due to the lack of public transport options in rural Ireland. Where they do exist, they can often be very unreliable, leaving commuters stranded in the rain and cold waiting for the next bus, hoping it will not be full. There is an hourly bus service from Cavan to Dublin but the issue is capacity, especially with the evening services. Regularly buses are at capacity when they reach the last stop out of Dublin at Blanchardstown and they have to leave people behind to wait an hour for the next bus, which often is also at capacity. People have told me they sometimes end up getting home two to three hours later than anticipated. There is a clear need for an additional service on that route. There is no proper shelter at that location either.

People living in more rural areas depend on the Local Link to provide public transport. It can be very sketchy across Cavan and Monaghan. I will acknowledge there are some areas well serviced by it. In my own area of Kilnaleck and Ballyjamesduff there are people constantly looking for a service into the county town. We have two services, one on a Thursday and one on a Saturday. It is not sufficient. Cavan-Monaghan Local Link has applied for resources to activate new routes from those areas but they have not yet been approved by Transport for Ireland. I am hoping they will be approved in the very near future. If affordable, accessible and reliable public transport infrastructure were expanded across the island, it would deliver social and economic benefits to all our cities, town and regions and would also meet our obligations in reducing our carbon emissions.

These issues are worse still for people with disabilities who face multiple barriers to using public transport such as broken lifts, having to give notice before their journeys so that a ramp is put in place, and limited wheelchair places on buses. For the State to align the public transport system with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, there is a need to make it universally accessible. To this end, the public transport accessibility retrofit programme budget needs to be increased to ensure accessibility at all train stations, platforms and bus stops. There need to be annual targets for retrofitting of older public transport infrastructure with reports measuring progress against these targets.

My colleague Deputy Pearse Doherty referred to a rail system in Donegal and said the last train to leave Donegal was in the early 1960s. The same applies to Cavan. It was probably the same train service that used to go through Cavan and on to Donegal. Those counties are now all left without a train service for that length of time. The Minister of State said the Navan railway line would be extended in 20 years' time. That needs to be addressed in a much shorter period.

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