Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Transport is always boasting about the Connecting Ireland programme and, on the surface, it looks good that we are, at last, getting some rural public transport services. There are two services in Connemara from An Cheathrú Rua to Claremorris and from An Cheathrú Rua to Clifden. So far, so good. There is only one snag which is that, with a bus service, you need bus stops, but some of the bus stops are up to 10 km apart. That means, having got to the main road, people have to walk up to 5 km in one direction to get a bus.

One lady rang my office during the week and told me something that is typical of what is happening. She said she had to walk 3 km along the main road to get to the bus. If you are going to walk that far, you will probably take your car and go the whole way.

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