The issue Sinn Féin has raised is extremely important. The cost of motoring, particularly in the context of tolls, is a massive issue for people. This is another example of the price gouging taking place in this country. The Government throws its hands in the air and asks, "What can we do about the cost-of-living crisis?" The Government created the aspect of the cost-of-living crisis that relates to tolls. It was Fianna Fáil that brought in the public-private partnerships back in the 2000s in the years of the Celtic tiger. I know quite a bit about this because I wrote my PhD about public-private partnerships. I remember that one of the best descriptions of them was, not public-private partnerships, but plundering the public purse. Public-private partnerships were an idea that came from England and they were essentially about privatising infrastructure. Governments used the excuse at the time that they did not have the finance, and they needed these forms of private finance to come in. It is making the same argument about housing now and we see the result of it. Hundreds of millions of euro is being paid by motorists in profit to these companies. We should be taking the privatised public-private partnerships back into public ownership and reducing that cost. Public-private partnerships are not a way to deliver infrastructure. When we look at the cost of motoring, it costs over €10,000 per year for the average petrol a diesel car on the road. I want to talk about the issue in my own constituency and what is happening now. Because of the mess made of the introduction of phase 7 of BusConnects, people in my constituency, in Finglas, Ballymun and Glasnevin, are being forced back into their cars because the bus service is not working in the same way as it used to. They have been pushed back into paying higher costs of fuel and we can see that the traffic in Dublin now is absolutely diabolical. It has got worse and there is gridlock. People are forced to pay more and more in fuel costs as they sit in their cars because public transport is not working. When we look at the issues in my constituency, there have been huge changes in places like Beneavin Road where the bus stop has actually been removed. We have elderly people who cannot access public transport. We have the ending of the No. 9 route, leading to the north of Glasnevin being disconnected from the centre of Glasnevin with an effect on schools, sports and other social activities. Many routes have been curtailed or stopped, including the Nos. 9, 13, 11, 14, 40 and 83 and the replacement routes, the E spine and the F spine, have not served the communities in the same way. We have huge issues of connectivity, particularly for people who have mobility issues and for children trying to go to school. For example, Finglas East has become effectively a bus desert with less frequent services. There is no direct bus service from Glasnevin Avenue down to O'Connell Street now. This is having a huge impact and while I support BusConnects, and it working, and public transport working, this is a mess for people. The public transport has to work for people, and I am being inundated with issues from people who are saying very clearly that the changes to the bus services are not working. The National Transport Authority and the Minister need to take this on board and we need to make our bus services work. If we genuinely want to get people out of their cars and if we want to actually help them with the cost-of-living crisis and the cost of motoring, then we need to make sure our public services and our bus services, actually work. People are caught between a rock and a hard place, getting back into the car because the bus is not working, facing even higher costs, or relying on a transport system that for some people is no longer working for them. BusConnects, as I said, is an ambitious project which has huge potential but only if it actually serves the people in the communities and the areas.

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