Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to deal with this matter. I appreciate it very much. It has come to my attention through local people and some workers in Bus Éireann that Bus Éireann intends to terminate the bus route 7 from Carrick-on-Suir to Dublin. The route commences in Clonmel, travels south-east for 13 miles, then north-east to Callan and on to Kilkenny and then to Dublin. Bus Éireann proposes to terminate this service from early March. No public representatives, to the best of my knowledge, have been contacted by Bus Éireann. I have had several contacts with Bus Éireann through telephone calls and e-mails. I got one standard reply from a representative of Bus Éireann which was basically an announcement. There was no interaction and a refusal to engage with me to discuss the matter.

Bus Éireann has a public service obligation and is subsidised annually by €34.5 million of taxpayers' money. The current service is used by many people from the Carrick-on-Suir area. The town of Carrick-on-Suir has a population of approximately 6,000 and the number of people who live in its hinterland brings that number up to 10,000. To the best of my knowledge, Carrick-on-Suir is the only town of its size in the country from which Bus Éireann does not provide a service directly to the capital city. There is also no direct rail link from the town to Dublin. Instead, one must travel to Limerick Junction, and wait to change trains, which means it takes three and half hours to get from the town to Dublin.

Many people rely on the bus service such as people who work in Kilkenny and those who avail of facilities run by the Camphill community and rehabilitation centres in Grangemockler and Callan that are located along the route. These people have no other way of travelling every day to their work. Many people use the route to attend hospital appointments in Dublin, to visit sick people in Dublin, to get to the airport, to attend clinics and to attend social events. People from my region use the service fairly regularly. On the Sundays of the All-Ireland championship the bus is packed in Carrick-on-Suir even before it leaves the town and makes its way to what is usually the enemy territory of Kilkenny. The bus service is very important to the town. For it to be withdrawn without any discussions or negotiations is completely unacceptable. How will the people who rely on this bus get to their places of work or the capital city from now on? Bus Éireann has made no provision to replace the service. In other places Bus Éireann has made provision and supplied feeder services.

The change in the route is the big query that I have. The travel time from Clonmel to Carrick-on-Suir, rather than leaving out Carrick-on-Suir, is only 20 minutes. I do not know how Bus Éireann can justify completely cutting off the town. It is a town of high social deprivation with high unemployment. We rely on people to come into the town with their income at the weekend. People use the bus service to go to their places of work in Dublin and spend their income in the town at weekends. Such expenditure will be affected if the bus service is cut off.

I ask the Minister to intervene in this issue even though I know he is not directly responsible for same. In other parts of the country, when similar cases were brought to the attention of the Minister of the day, common sense prevailed. In some cases pilot schemes were put in place and some link-up services were put in place. I have outlined my case to the Minister and await his response. I thank him for coming to the House.