Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to the House.

Denis Landy (Labour)
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I thank the Minister for coming to the House to deal with this matter. I appreciate it very much. It has come to my attention through local people and some workers in Bus Éireann that Bus Éireann intends to terminate the bus route 7 from Carrick-on-Suir to Dublin. The route commences in Clonmel, travels south-east for 13 miles, then north-east to Callan and on to Kilkenny and then to Dublin. Bus Éireann proposes to terminate this service from early March. No public representatives, to the best of my knowledge, have been contacted by Bus Éireann. I have had several contacts with Bus Éireann through telephone calls and e-mails. I got one standard reply from a representative of Bus Éireann which was basically an announcement. There was no interaction and a refusal to engage with me to discuss the matter.

Bus Éireann has a public service obligation and is subsidised annually by €34.5 million of taxpayers' money. The current service is used by many people from the Carrick-on-Suir area. The town of Carrick-on-Suir has a population of approximately 6,000 and the number of people who live in its hinterland brings that number up to 10,000. To the best of my knowledge, Carrick-on-Suir is the only town of its size in the country from which Bus Éireann does not provide a service directly to the capital city. There is also no direct rail link from the town to Dublin. Instead, one must travel to Limerick Junction, and wait to change trains, which means it takes three and half hours to get from the town to Dublin.

Many people rely on the bus service such as people who work in Kilkenny and those who avail of facilities run by the Camphill community and rehabilitation centres in Grangemockler and Callan that are located along the route. These people have no other way of travelling every day to their work. Many people use the route to attend hospital appointments in Dublin, to visit sick people in Dublin, to get to the airport, to attend clinics and to attend social events. People from my region use the service fairly regularly. On the Sundays of the All-Ireland championship the bus is packed in Carrick-on-Suir even before it leaves the town and makes its way to what is usually the enemy territory of Kilkenny. The bus service is very important to the town. For it to be withdrawn without any discussions or negotiations is completely unacceptable. How will the people who rely on this bus get to their places of work or the capital city from now on? Bus Éireann has made no provision to replace the service. In other places Bus Éireann has made provision and supplied feeder services.

The change in the route is the big query that I have. The travel time from Clonmel to Carrick-on-Suir, rather than leaving out Carrick-on-Suir, is only 20 minutes. I do not know how Bus Éireann can justify completely cutting off the town. It is a town of high social deprivation with high unemployment. We rely on people to come into the town with their income at the weekend. People use the bus service to go to their places of work in Dublin and spend their income in the town at weekends. Such expenditure will be affected if the bus service is cut off.

I ask the Minister to intervene in this issue even though I know he is not directly responsible for same. In other parts of the country, when similar cases were brought to the attention of the Minister of the day, common sense prevailed. In some cases pilot schemes were put in place and some link-up services were put in place. I have outlined my case to the Minister and await his response. I thank him for coming to the House.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator Landy for raising this matter. He has raised it with me on a number of occasions and I am aware of his deep concern about the issue. I welcome the opportunity to respond to him formally on the floor of the Seanad and I will outline the position.

I am very much aware of the importance of this matter. I am also aware of the concern that this change is causing among the communities to which the Senator has referred. Last week, I and the Minister of State, Deputy Ann Phelan, met some residents who live along another part of the route that the Senator referred to in order to discuss this issue with them.

As the Senator is aware, the National Transport Authority has responsibility at national level for securing the provision of public passenger land transport services. This includes the provision of subvented bus and rail services by Bus Éireann, Dublin Bus and Irish Rail. The National Transport Authority also licenses commercial bus passenger services. Under the Public Transport Regulation Act 2009, the National Transport Authority assumed responsibility for the regulation of commercial bus passenger services. These services were previously regulated by my Department under the Road Transport Act 1932. The Act obliges all operators to be licensed if they are providing public bus passenger services, and it is applied equally to both private and public bus companies.

Public service obligation, PSO, services covered by public service contracts do not fall within the licensing system. Commercial bus services are licensed in accordance with the provisions of the Public Transport Regulation Act 2009 and in line with the NTA's published guidelines for the licensing of public bus passenger services. The guidelines are published on the NTA website. The guidelines were prepared in accordance with the detailed provisions set out in section 23 of the 2009 Act.

Where operators apply to withdraw or curtail commercial bus services, and this goes to the heart of one of the questions posed by the Senator, the NTA will grant such amendments as it has no legislative powers to refuse them. In such circumstances the NTA may examine whether, in the absence of any commercial services, a PSO exists to provide socially necessary but commercially unviable public transport services. Such examination will include an assessment of the demand for public transport services and options either to reconfigure existing PSO services or to tender competitively for the provision of services. In either event, the NTA's ability to provide such services is subject to the availability of funding.

As to the specific issue of the funding of substitute services, I am acutely aware of the concerns of many people regarding recent decisions to withdraw licensed commercial services to a number of intermediate locations on major routes into Dublin, including route 7 from Carrick-on- Suir. Major improvements to the national roads network on the M9 motorway have provided the opportunity for commercial bus operators to offer improved journey times between Dublin and regional cities in particular. What has happened is Bus Éireann and other commercial bus operators have sought to amend their licences accordingly with the consequent effect of reducing the level of service provided to a number of intermediate locations on the network.The NTA has indicated that it will examine options either to reconfigure existing PSO services or to tender competitively for the provision of services to those areas affected by the changes. I should add that I gave a commitment to avoid further reductions in PSO funding, and for the first time since 2008, the level of funding for bus and rail services is being maintained in 2015 at the same level as in 2014. I will continue to liaise with the NTA on the issues involved. I also recently secured €110 million for public transport as part of the 2014 Supplementary Estimate for my Department, which included €45 million for Irish Rail's network renewal investment and €50 million for bus renewal for Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann. I assure the Senator that I will be examining this issue further in the coming weeks.

Denis Landy (Labour)
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I thank the Minister for a very comprehensive reply and his personal interest in the matter. I acknowledge that I have been in contact with him on a number of occasions. There is a bit of ducks and drakes going on here. I have a letter that is the only correspondence I got from Bus Éireann even though I wrote to it at least five times and probably tried to ring it ten times. It says that it can confirm that it has accepted an offer of a revised schedule of services for route 7 from the NTA and is in discussions with its drivers. It seems that Bus Éireann is putting the onus on the NTA when the Minister's reply shows that it is Bus Éireann that should be going to the NTA to change its routes and to see whether this is acceptable. I am delighted the Minister will take a personal interest in this and will examine it further. Could the Minister facilitate a meeting for me with the NTA - regardless of whether it involves the Minister as well - to flesh this out and get clarity on it? We will pursue it. It is saying it will change by the beginning of March so we do not have too much time but I will be in further contact with the Minister about it.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Senator Landy has raised this matter with me on many occasions. It is appropriate that we have this debate here because it is a really important issue. The Senator already knows that it is a complicated and challenging issue. A big contributory factor to this is the fact that as our national motorway network has been upgraded - the M9 is the particular motorway that has contributed to this - the bus operators want to make use of that improved network to service more people. A consequence of that is that people who are not located immediately adjacent to that motorway or who are in places with lower population densities than larger towns or cities are now facing the consequence of that decision. That is a core cause of what is happening here.

I understand very clearly that the availability of public transport or, more broadly, communal transport, be it operated by a private bus operator or public company, provides essential connectivity to people. A challenge that must be responded to is how that kind of connectivity can be delivered given that national routes have been upgraded and bus companies are understandably looking to make use of them. I cannot tell the Senator that I have an immediate answer to this but I can assure him that the NTA, which is the regulatory body in this area and does excellent work managing competing demands from what are often scarce resources, is examining the matter to see if a response is possible. As Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, I have an interest in this matter and I will be contacting and working with the NTA to see if a response can be put in place to respond to the needs articulated by the Senator. I assure him that I will certainly keep him abreast of this because I know it is a charged matter. I met a resident recently who explained to me that if the changes were to go ahead, she did not know how she was going to get into work. That is a legitimate concern for somebody to have. I have only have a fixed amount of money and while we are in a better position than we were a year ago and an even better position than we were the year before that, it is still a fixed amount of money. I have growing demand and am trying to figure out how we can bridge that gap. The NTA is looking at this matter. I will keep in contact with the NTA about it and I assure the Senator that I will keep him fully aware of and updated regarding any developments in this area.