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

I am very supportive of the NTA and the work it has done on this matter. It has had a central role in designing, promoting and pushing the new Connecting Ireland system. It has been given additional staff resources in the past two years so it can scale up. I agree that the Local Links are the right vehicle. They are community-based and distributed across 15 centres in a network with operations throughout the country with very good local knowledge. In the meeting I had with Local Link representatives in December, the key focus of the discussion was the corporate and governance arrangements and resourcing for them to be able to take, as the Deputy described it, the "burden". This is a huge opportunity for Local Link. This is a transformative moment and it is in the integration with the health transport system as well. We should also look at integration with the education transport system in this way, as well as these new PSO-type services. The response from the public, particularly younger people, has been phenomenal. People are using these services. We need to go further with better marketing of the services, we need bus stops and we need much better timetabling, which require resources for the Local Link operators so they can scale up to the opportunity. It is an opportunity more than a burden.

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