I preface my remarks about public transport in Meath East and my reservations about the extension of the remit of the National Transport Authority by commending the individual staff members across all ranks within the National Transport Authority, Bus Éireann and Irish Rail, as applicable to County Meath. However, I will list off the following reservations. I could probably echo everything that Deputies Gogarty and Lahart said. As County Meath is a rural county, albeit one under strong urban influence, I will provide some rural context to the debate. Last week, Oireachtas Members received a briefing from the senior management team of Meath County Council. Our population, as per the 2022 census, stood at 220,000 people. A total of 60,834 drove to work, while 4,959 went to work by bus and a further 1,241 travelled to work by train. I do not have the exact figures for 2026 but we know that the county’s growth was 13%. In my municipal district of Ratoath, coupled with Ashbourne, the population growth has been closer to 30%, hence why I said the area is under strong urban influence. If we also take into account decarbonisation zones, of which there are nine in Meath, the top contributor to carbon emissions across the board is transport. It would, therefore, strike one as being a no-brainer to optimise our public transport offering in County Meath, particularly in the areas of increasing population and those closest to the city. I welcome the announcement last week of the preferred option route for the Navan rail line. There are plenty of opportunities in that regard, even through the public consultation. I know, having met some of the currently impacted landowners, that there will be some constructive solutions coming forward in that regard. We absolutely have to aim for the best offering to reach the widest number of residents in the county, particularly for those who commute out of the county and, more importantly, for that increasing number of people commuting into our relatively new FDI companies that have located in the county. I will provide some context as to where I am going with this. Primarily, I have a major concern about the expansion of the remit of the NTA because we have some legacy issues where the public transport offering is not keeping pace with the growth of the county and the needs of residents. Even on social media as it stands, we have residents raising their concerns about their commute and whether they will relocate. I try to be solution-focused. Since 2016, I started the process of meetings with Bus Éireann. In 2018, we added the NTA to those meetings. Everybody was courteous, lots of solutions were put forward and there was listening and hearing to some degree, but what need now in County Meath is action. We are very aware of Bus Éireann and the recruitment issues that beleaguered the organisation up to quite recently. It informed me a couple of months ago that drivers and mechanics have been recruited but that a fleet is now required. I am concerned that the NTA focus tends to be myopic. I get off the bus on O'Connell Street and walk up to Leinster House at the beginning of the day and do the reverse in the evening. I have to say that I seriously envy this city in the context of the fleet of very young vehicles that traverse it. I might get on to a groaning, creaking 171 or 161 to get back home to County Meath. There is definitely room for improvement in that regard. We welcome the extension of the bus corridor to the M3 Parkway and the announcement of the increase in rail services. That will be a game-changer. On the bus in the morning, I might take a photo of the traffic backed up along by Kepak. At that stage, I am usually sitting on the bridge in Clonee wondering if I will make the disability matters committee meeting at 9.30 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. I might frantically send a text ahead, run a bit and walk a bit along O'Connell Street in order to get in here on time. The reason is the traffic jams and the fact that certain buses do not show up. A simple example is USB faults on some buses, some of which were off the road for two days as a result of the turnaround time and the knock-on effects. My concerns are well founded. Before going out to the other urban conurbations, can we please get County Meath up to scratch? About three years ago, I carried out a survey. We are looking for a link bus to the M3 Parkway. We received 1,200 signatures of known persons within 36 hours, so there is massive need for that service. Park-and-ride facilities fall under the remit of the NTA. A great deal of work is being done in that regard, but I caution as to whether we could have park-and-ride facilities to the north of Ashbourne, Ratoath and Dunshaughlin in particular, because the traffic through Meath is funnelled from Cavan, south Monaghan and parts of Louth. It is no longer the spoke effect of travel directly to the city centre. We have travel east and west to workplaces in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Fingal. Transport options need to reflect that movement of people. The 109A service to Dublin Airport and, very importantly, Dublin City University has been seriously curtailed. Students under pressure to make exams or lectures are having to get off buses in Phibsborough and switch over if the 109 or the 103 are running late, as they invariably are through no fault of the drivers involved. The delays are caused by traffic congestion. It is a chicken-and-egg situation. If the service is provided to and from Meath, commuters will use it. It will take more vehicles off the road and the congestion, air quality and all of the other issues will be alleviated. In the area of complaints and customer feedback, Liz who works with me suggested to the NTA something which we see in other jurisdictions, namely a simple QR code at a bus stop that can be scanned. Otherwise, people have to log on to the TFI website, which is cumbersome. People are worried at that point as to whether they should run for the train at the M3 Parkway or hitch a lift. I have often gone with two or three people when we have been left behind, put them into my car and told them to text their parents to say they were with me and that we were heading for the train. If there was a QR code at the bus stop and on the buses, that would seriously improve the real time situation and feed into the app we all use. On tap on, tap off, are we seriously talking about tit being three years away? If you visit the UK or France and do not have an Oyster card or a Lignes d'Azur card, you can take out your bank card and tap on. I know there are limitations to importing Leap information but all of these simple things will encourage customer buy-in. As a member of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters, it would be completely remiss of me not to flag the most serious issue. I refer here, and I stand to be corrected, to the breach of Article 9 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to live well within their communities. That is not really feasible if they have to give 24 hours of advanced notice to order their seat on the bus. A bus may come along that does not have the dropped floor or the bus stop - which I know is the remit of the local authority - is not sufficient to equalise the levels for them to alight the bus. There are simple solutions on offer in this regard. For active and sustainable travel, funding is required for Ratoath and Dunshaughlin to ensure pedestrian safety and to slow vehicles. Walkability audits were carried out two or three years ago. Funding for that would be very welcome. I implore the Ministers of State, Deputies Buttimer and Canney, and the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, to ensure that Meath's public transport options are expanded and optimised before the remit of the NTA is expanded.

Sentiment score: 0.11