Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

I thank Senator O'Loughlin for raising this important topic, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister for Transport, Darragh O'Brien. I wish to clarify that the Minister has responsibility for policy and overall funding relating to public transport but neither he nor his officials are involved in the day-to-day operation of public transport services. The statutory responsibility for securing the provision of public passenger transport services nationally rests with the National Transport Authority, NTA. The NTA works with the public transport operators, which deliver the services and have responsibility for day-to-day operational matters.

That said, the Government is strongly committed to providing all citizens with reliable and realistic sustainable mobility options, and public transport plays a key role in the delivery of this goal. In the new programme for Government, Securing Ireland's Future, the Government has committed to increasing Local Link services in rural areas to better connect villages, towns and cities.

To support this objective, under budget 2025, the Department of Transport secured €658.442 million in funding for public service obligation, PSO, and Local Link services provided by State operators and under contract by the NTA this year. This includes funding for the continuation of the various fare initiatives, such as the young adult card and the 90-minute fare, until the end of 2025. Funding has been provided to extend free child fares on PSO services to include those aged five to eight years. Funding of €15 million was secured to support the roll-out of new and enhanced bus services in 2025, including the continuation of BusConnects, Connecting Ireland and the planned introduction of further new town services.

Funding for the rural transport programme has increased from €21 million in 2019 to €57 million in 2024, and over 150 new or enhanced services have been rolled out under the Connecting Ireland programme since 2022. The roll-out of the Connecting Ireland rural mobility plan, which was action 32 of the sustainable mobility policy action plan, has been hugely successful. Under this plan, 240 towns and villages have been newly connected to the public transport network. Sixty-one new connections have been established to healthcare facilities and 41 new connections have been made to higher education facilities. The new and enhanced services introduced to date have added in excess of 300,000 weekly vehicle kilometres to the Transport for Ireland, TFI, public transport network.

The five-year plan also aims to improve the co-ordination and connections of different bus and rail services in order to provide a seamless and efficient transport system throughout rural Ireland. Forty-nine of the new and enhanced services provide connections with existing rail services. Passenger numbers have seen a fivefold increase since the roll-out of Connecting Ireland began in January 2022, with a record weekly high of 105,986 passenger journeys recorded in October 2024.

I now turn to the specific routes Senator O'Loughlin raised. The proposed route 888 linking Allenwood to Athy is expected to launch in June, which is next month. Discussions between the NTA and Local Link Kildare South Dublin on a route connecting Suncroft to Kildare-Newbridge are now at an advanced stage, and the NTA expects to finalise details in the coming weeks. A review of the network - Newbridge to Maynooth University - is now under way. However, this needs to take account of a number of commercial bus operators operating between Newbridge and Maynooth currently.

The Department of Transport, the NTA and the operators are working to ensure the optimised deployment of resources across the public transport network to match passenger demand.