Laura Harmon (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. It is good to see him. I wish to talk about public transport in County Cork and Cork city in particular. I raise the issue of the need for the light rail project to progress in Cork city. This is something even the Taoiseach spoke about recently in regard to it needing to be a priority for Cork. We really need to see action on the project. The Cork Chamber will agree with me too on the issue of connectivity in Cork and the need to improve it. There is certainly a need to improve connectivity between the city and the airport as well in terms of options for services to promote tourism and to make things easier to allow people to get to the airport, particularly for business purposes.

Like many other cities, Cork is impacted by congestion.It is becoming a bit of a vicious circle in Cork. People are being pushed into cars because the bus service is not reliable and then we have parking and congestion issues. I will mention the 214 bus in particular which stops beside where I live in Wilton. It is extremely unreliable. I know the route is being looked at, as is the 220 route in Cork, in relation to ghost buses. A student in Munster Technological University, MTU, launched an app in recent weeks - his name is Sasha Mitichkin - called no show bus tracker. It is feeding the data to Bus Éireann. Young people in particular are deeply affected by this.

It is also worth noting that the cost of the Bus Éireann service is overpriced. It is cheaper to get from Dublin to Cork on a bus than it is from Kerry or Waterford to Cork using the bus service. For students who are commuting to such places as University College Cork, UCC, and MTU, these prices need to be looked at. I will raise it separately with Bus Éireann and the National Transport Authority, NTA.

I welcome the commitment to providing transport police in the programme for Government. That needs to happen. We would certainly welcome it in Cork as there are a number of safety concerns and there have been a number of antisocial behaviour incidents on our buses. The tap-on service on the buses is also being trialled in Cork. That would make it more accessible for everyone. However, ultimately we need to see a complete scaling-up of the ambition when it comes to public transport in the country as a whole, including Cork. I know Ministers are busy, but I challenge any Minister to come to Cork and spend a day trying to get from A to B on a bus, without the ministerial car. They would find it pretty difficult to make it to meetings on time. I hear from business owners all the time that employees are late for work frequently because they cannot get there because of the bus. Students are also late for college. Lecturers are late. It is affecting how the city operates. It also affects people's stress levels and mental health.