Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sure, like many of us, the Leader will have been deeply concerned and troubled by the news from Bus Éireann this week that it proposes to suspend a number of crucial and vital Expressway bus services from Dublin to a number of key locations throughout the rest of the country. As announced this week, the organisation is minded to cut services from Dublin to Belfast, Galway, Limerick and Cork and it appears that the decision is inevitable. As I am sure everyone will agree, this will have a potentially devastating negative impact on workers and commuters in the first instance, but also on the economies, communities and service providers of these places. Most ironic of all, it will possibly have an impact on the environment as well.

We are trying to find a balance, but as we emerge from this pandemic we will of course encourage people to travel, spend money and use our public transport infrastructure in order to visit and stimulate economies across the entire island. How do we propose to encourage, facilitate and enable more people to do precisely that? It appears there are to be cuts in vital and key strategic routes to the areas we call home and have a serious investment in.

Given that his Department was facilitated with a substantial amount of money at the beginning of the pandemic, it defies all logic that the Green Party Minister for Transport would oversee these cuts and the suspension of services on his watch. It is potentially devastating for communities and will cause a great deal of concern, regardless of where one sits in the Chamber or where one comes from. People will be deeply concerned, affected and impacted by the suspension of these services.

Aside from the economic and societal impacts, there is also a real concern, from my perspective and many others, that we want to get people out of private cars and facilitate them taking journeys on public transport. We do not want to take away public transport services and leave those who do not have private cars with limited opportunities while those who do have private cars have to get back into them. I propose an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister for Transport address the House on these proposed cuts and what he and his Department propose to do about them.