Denis Landy (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State as a fellow Tipperary man, albeit one who is 90 miles from my location. There is hardly any transport service in rural Ireland as far as people are aware. That is part of the difficulty. We need to get the news of services out to people who want to use them.

The use of the rural transport scheme by schools seems to be ad hoc. In my local village, pupils at the school use the scheme, while in a village three miles away, no one uses it, although it is available. The benefit of this scheme for families that can afford only one car is that the mother or father or whoever is at home does not have to worry about getting children to and from school, and the fee is nominal. This service should be made almost compulsory.

Currently, the scheme is run by Pobal. If the Minister has such figures, I ask him to state the administration costs of the services throughout the country. The area where I live is covered by the service that Senator O'Neill mentioned, which covers Carlow, Kilkenny and south Tipperary, but I am interested in the administration costs of all the services. Are we getting efficiency for the money being spent?

The biggest issue I bring to the Minister's attention is the role of local authorities in the rural transport programme. When it was rolled out in the early 2000s, many other councillors throughout the country and I argued that it should be run under the umbrella of the local authorities. We did that for several reasons. In my area, we have 26 councillors. Information about the scheme would be in every house in the constituency. People would be made aware of it, it would be properly used, and there would be some democratic accountability for the spend involved in it. It is run under the aegis of the Minister of States's Department, through Pobal, and there is no local involvement in it. I understand each Department is required to report to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government before 12 September on services that can be devolved to local government. I respectfully suggest the Minister of State put the rural transport programme on the list. It is an ideal scheme for local government to administer. In whatever fashion that was agreed, it would be ideal for local authorities to have it as part of their remit.

The Minister of State asked for suggestions or proposals. I return to what Senator Daly said about school buses. They are often left idle from 9.30 a.m. until 4 p.m., yet parent councils are fundraising to provide buses for schools to take pupils to swimming pools, hurling matches, exhibitions and museums. We need some joined-up thinking in that regard.

My final point is on another area where joined-up thinking is required. Some of the shuttle train services that Iarnród Éireann provides stop at stations that are not in the centre of the places that people want to go to, and there is no public transport there to pick them up. I will give an example. There is a service a couple of times a day from Limerick junction, better known as Tipperary station, to Waterford. Plunkett station in Waterford is a mile and a half from the city centre and there is no transport link. People have to walk across the bridge and into the city. If it is a wet day, they will not do it again. We need some joined-up thinking.

I thank the Minister of State for coming in and I look forward to the outcome of this debate.