Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to echo the comments of my colleague, Senator Kelleher, on the massively historic statement that will be made this evening in the Dáil. I am thinking, in particular, of the leaders of the Traveller communities across Ireland who fought for this for many years. I am sure we will revisit this issue over the next week or so.

In fairness to the Leader, he has arranged a number of debates with the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, for which I thank him. The theme that I pursued during those debates was the fact that when one looks at the transport map of Ireland, one can see that the 500,000 people who live in the north-west region have no motorway or rail connection; nor do they have any direct air connection from Derry city, the fourth largest city on this island, to Dublin. That reflects the Border, partition and neglect over many years. Just to reiterate, there is no publicly-funded rail or air connection and no motorway. Every other region, and rightly so, has such connections. In that context, I am absolutely stunned that of all of the locations that Bus Éireann would seek to remove services from, it chose the route to Derry. That will mean that we will have no publicly-funded rail, bus, air or motorway connections for a population of 500,000 people. While I know that Translink in the North provides services, as do a number of private operators, I ask the Leader to raise this issue with the Minister, Deputy Ross. The Minister must be asked to explain how Bus Éireann can make such a decision because it defies logic. It clearly demonstrates a total lack of joined-up thinking in Government in terms of transport on this island. I appeal to the Leader to ask the Minister to respond to the House directly on this matter, particularly in view of the fact that he reassured us that these issues are of importance to him and to the Government.