Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have not seen that response so I cannot comment on it directly. I would not be overly concerned about unnecessary trips, to be honest. I do not think many people are going around on buses and trains just for the craic, but there would be genuine problems with free public transport - cost and capacity. We could see capacity being overloaded, and that would not be an advantage to anyone, and, second, there is an issue of cost. We want to invest additional money in public transport in new services, not just making existing services less expensive. We have reduced public transport fares in Ireland and it has been successful in increasing the number of people using public transport. That should be noted too.

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