Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise two issues. The first is Limerick city centre because, as Members will have heard, the International Rugby Experience is due to close in a couple of weeks. It is in a beautiful new building with millions invested in it but it will now be shut down. The model has not worked. It points to a bigger crisis within Limerick city. Limerick city centre has never been in worse shape. It is hard to understand that given it should be doing well with the huge increase in population, but there are a number of fundamental problems that Limerick and the local authorities have never addressed. I will not comment on the new mayor because I want to be fair to the man and give him enough time to see if he can address the issues, but it is very hard to get in and out of Limerick city centre. The bus service is, unfortunately, very unreliable, and I will come back to that issue. We have an overground train service. We have had lots of promises from this Government but we have had no actual delivery of additional train services. This is a massive problem because you cannot get into Limerick city centre. I almost missed my train this morning. A journey that should take about 20 minutes took me 45 minutes. Limerick is in constant gridlock. More importantly, there are no actual city centre attractions. There is no cinema, bowling alley or ice rink. There is nothing in the city centre. When you talk to retailers, they will tell you the situation has been getting worse for years. The International Rugby Experience is living proof of that. It was a massive investment, and now 18 jobs will be gone and a prime building on O’Connell Street in Limerick will be empty. We urgently need proposals for the rejuvenation of Limerick city centre.

There is an issue of political accountability. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have run the council for years. For example, when it came to their plans to change the city centre, they bottled it. Instead of pedestrianising the city centre properly, they half did it and it just has not worked. As a result, the city centre is quiet at the weekend, all of the outdoor shopping centres around the city are busy and we are losing our city centre. Whenever we are back next, I call for an urgent debate on this issue.

A related issue is safety on public transport. I have just come from a meeting with SIPTU about its Respect Transport Workers campaign. SIPTU has a simple ask, one that Sinn Féin certainly has signed up to, which is the establishment of a new national public transport police service. We heard directly from bus drivers who spoke of horror at physical attacks - we have seen that in Limerick - threats, assaults, spitting and stone throwing. As a result, there is a huge turnover of staff. Bus Éireann cannot keep its staff because of a lack of staff safety, yet we still have no national transport police.This is something that we should all be willing to sign up to. Let me be clear that I am not talking about a privatised body or RoboCop venture like we see on the Luas but, rather, about proper jobs and proper public-transport police to protect our services and encourage people to use public transport. I ask for a debate on the matter to be held whenever the time might be right.