Ryan O'Meara (Tipperary North, Fianna Fail)

I appreciate the response the Minister of State has given me on behalf of the Minister for Transport. I appreciate that a lot of the work that has been done has been really positive, but I really do not appreciate where the policy stands. I hope the Minister of State will carry that back, while she is at Cabinet, to the Minister. I represent a constituency that does not have PSO routes and does not have public routes either. A number of years ago we lost the X12 and X8 routes, which were direct routes that travelled through County Tipperary.

Deputy Ward spoke earlier about the 46A, which I had quite a fondness for during my years in UCD. We all mourn its loss. Interestingly enough, during that time I travelled on the X12 regularly. It ran from Limerick to Dublin. That is gone. We do not have it anymore. We have private operators.

We do not have the PSO routes but we have children under nine who cannot qualify for free transport or the free travel scheme in the way that their peers in areas that have PSO routes or urban areas can qualify. It is, quite simply, an inequity in the system.

In her response, the Minister of State stated: “I would like to assure the Deputy that improving the accessibility, reliability, and affordability of public transport, while ensuring the system remains well-funded and responsive to passenger needs, is a core priority under the programme for Government.” I ask the Minister of State to carry that exact sentence back to the Cabinet and the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. If we want to improve the accessibility, reliability and affordability of public transport, particularly public transport for young children under nine in rural Ireland, we need to give them the same access to those routes as children in urban areas or areas with PSO obligations. Just because we are unlucky enough not to have them does not mean that the children and families I represent in rural Ireland should be unlucky enough not to be able to access the system.

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