Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt that considerable headway has been made, particularly in terms of public transport. We see across Europe many countries struggling to get transport numbers back to pre-Covid levels whereas, here in Ireland, we have not only rebounded but exceeded that. Anybody who is using public transport these days can see the number of people travelling and I am always struck, particularly on the Waterford to Dublin train, by the number of young people travelling. That is directly to do with the decreased fares for younger people.

I would like to know more about the position on delivery of the pathfinder programmes. Those are hugely ambitious projects and the timeline is very tight. It is very positive what we have done in regard to rural public transport. Although these figures are already out of date, we had 107 new services in 104 weeks, which is more than one extra service a week and I am sure even that has changed since then. However, integration is critical and I am not sure we are getting that piece right yet in terms of how we integrate active travel, such as walking and cycling modes, into our public transport nodes to make it as seamless as possible.

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