John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will start by wishing the Cathaoirleach and Mr. Martin Groves, and everyone else who make this place such a special place to be every day, a very happy Christmas.

When I first came into this House, one of the first things I discussed was the concept of commuters and providing tax saver tickets. We are now about 20 months into this pandemic and the National Transport Authority, NTA, has still not produced a three-day tax saver or flexible ticket. I have been engaging with it every month. My friend, Senator Buttimer, accuses me of being dramatic on certain occasions but I would literally get more information out of North Korea than I would out of the NTA. I get one-sentence responses back to say it is trying to introduce this and then to say it has not decided if it needs legislative change or not. I have gone to the Minister for Finance and have got it in writing to say that the NTA does not need legislative change. I have presented this response that would enable the authority to introduce the flexible ticket and that it does not require a change to tax legislation. I then received a one-sentence response back to say it was still looking at it. Getting one and two-line responses is just not good enough in this day and age and it is literally like having to drag the information out of a body.

The other issue we have is that I cannot seek a Commencement debate about this issue because the NTA is not responsible to this House and it is difficult to get those types of responses back from it. The NTA has told me that it is about to be introduced in the first quarter of next year. That will be pretty much two years since this pandemic started and it is simply unacceptable that although we have been back working in the office properly from last September, seven to eight months in we still have people paying for full monthly or annual tickets when they are only commuting to an office setting for two or three days a week. I would greatly appreciate if the Acting Leader and his office could write to the NTA, Hopefully he will be more successful than I have been in trying to get some sort of information from the NTA as to when this will be introduced.