Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a budget of €35 billion, and the officials from the NTA will not meet us. They will not respond to the email even after eight months. They say they do not have the staff or the budget to meet us. That is with a budget of €35 billion. This is a quango that is totally out of control. It has a process in place regarding how it responds to the Houses of the Oireachtas, but local councillors and communities and people on the ground cannot meet its representatives. They are doing laptop studies in Dublin on infrastructural projects in Cork and they will not meet anyone to discuss them. We have a major issue in the context of how this organisation was put together. We all understand that public transportation is the key going forward, but it is about taking people on the journey with us. The problem we have is the disconnect. The NTA does not care about communities because it does not engage with them. Eight months of asking for a meeting and I have got nothing other than the reply that it cannot afford it or cannot send a representative down to Cork. Maybe it is a Cork thing and the officials do not want to come down. Maybe they are based in Dublin and do not know where Cork is except for a spot on the map. Will the Minister of State go back to the Minister for Transport and request that he, after eight months of me failing to get a meeting with officials from the NTA, ask the organisation he is funding to meet us in Clontarf Street to discuss how it can stand over moving the bus stop that was there without any consultation.