I want to talk about the delays in the roll-out of BusConnects in Limerick, a city the Minister knows well and that he has said a lot of positive things about previously. We were promised this in 2025, and 2025 became 2026, then 2027, and is now 2028. From what the departmental officials have said, we know that the NTA does not have enough funding when it comes to the roll-out of new services and that is why we are seeing a deprioritisation of public transport by the Government, particularly compared with the previous Government, which had the 2:1 ratio in favour of spending on public transport, which I support. If it is rolled out by 2028, then by that time we will have had a nine-year horizon since BusConnects was first mooted as part of the Limerick Shannon Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy. This is something that could really affect us in terms of housing, balanced regional development and attracting in foreign direct investment, FDI, because our unreliable bus network in Limerick undermines confidence and the modal shift that we all know we need in order to meet our climate targets. For example, King's Island is one of the most deprived communities in the country. King's Island has no bus service after 6 p.m. It has one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the country. It has no bus service on a Sunday. It has no bus service on a bank holiday Monday. It is waiting on BusConnects for this to be delivered. Condell Road is the only major primary road in Limerick with a bus lane but no bus service. It, too, is waiting on BusConnects. It is a 45-minute walk to the local secondary school. It is a 30-minute walk to the local primary school. We have had hundreds of houses built out there in the past couple of years, which I welcome, but there is no bloody bus. Delaying this further means that this will come in after the transport strategy and after the regional spatial and economic strategy, RSES, review and it will not be able to leverage these. Limerick Chamber has written to the Minister on this and I echo what it has said. We need to get a hell of a lot more people in Limerick out of their cars and onto public transport, and the way we do that is by implementing the entirety of BusConnects in a timely manner and making sure the funding is there for the physical interventions because the bus needs priority over private cars. We need to pass legislation to allow Bus Éireann and other operators to use the CCTV on their buses to penalise private motorists illegally driving in bus lanes and introduce traffic cameras on every single bus lane to make sure that, if you are caught driving on a bus lane, you automatically get penalty points and a fine.

Sentiment score: -0.02