The NTA in its current form is too distant, too rigid and too centralised. Simply put, it is not local enough. This Bill will go some way to help in this regard. The authority is not embedded in the communities it serves and it is increasingly seen as a large, unresponsive bureaucracy. Decisions are being made about towns and villages by an organisation that does not understand how they work. This is a major issue. I see it every day in my constituency of Wicklow. In Greystones, four school principals are representing over 4,000 students and families. I asked the NTA to sit down and meet them because Greystones is very much a growing town and the needs of many of the schoolchildren who use the buses are not being met by the current bus service. We were trying to resolve that issue. The NTA said it could not meet the principals because, if it did that, it would have to meet everyone. Maybe that is the point. Maybe it should be meeting them. The principals I have referred to represent 4,000 people. It would have been worthwhile for the NTA to sit down and hear exactly what gaps were in the service and potentially what it could do. I realise it cannot address this overnight but it is important for it to hear what the gaps are. When we have a system that is made so centrally and rigidly, it causes a lot of difficulties. I will give some examples. I have spoken many times in here about the 199 bus, a Local Link bus that was to go from Glendalough through Laragh and Roundwood to Bray. It was announced in April 2025. In May, I was told it was fully funded and that it was a priority service. In July, it went out to tender. In August, Nolan Coaches won the tender. The company hired four drivers and got a bus but that bus is now sitting in a depot in Clonshaugh and has not yet been put into operation. The service was meant to start in September but still has not started. It is now May 2026, a year since the NTA told me the bus route was a priority and had funding. It would now appear that the funding is no longer available, and the service is certainly not operating. Let me look to west Wicklow. I had a group of students in today, some of whom were from Blessington and some of whom were from Baltinglass. The Blessington group had to get the 65 bus from Blessington to the Dáil. It took them two and a half hours although it is a 50-minute journey by car. They were telling me about the problems. They could not get the 9.30 a.m. service because it is always late, so they had to get the 8 a.m. service. All of these small issues cause enormous problems for people. The Baltinglass crowd just did not have transport available to them and they had to hire a minibus. There are four services on the 132 bus route every day that connect Baltinglass to Dublin via Tallaght. People tell me that at least once a day one of those services is cancelled. This is a Bus Éireann service. Many times, people are left stranded in work in Tallaght with no way of getting home. People have to be able to trust the bus service in place for them. Unfortunately, there is no reliability. Where there are problems with reliability, frequency and trust, it is important that the NTA act as a go-between. It needs to understand and hear what the problems are. Unfortunately, that is not happening. As I have raised previously, the issues go beyond the bus services as they also affect the DART service. I want to raise again with the Minister that there have not been replacement buses or additional Luas services put in place, but there are going to be 30,000 women taking part in the VHI Women's Mini Marathon. It is the world's largest all-women 10 km race and raises €10 million for charities every year. For the second year in a row, there is going to be no DART between Wicklow and Dublin city for the marathon. Last year, people told me there were no additional Luas or bus services and people were late to the race. I understand that sometimes the long weekends are a good opportunity for staff to carry out works, but there needs to be some recognition that there are just some weekends where the service is so needed that it should be running. When we talk about extending the NTA's powers, we also have to talk about accountability because, at the moment, there are serious questions about the NTA's oversight. Just last week, we learned that Irish Rail effectively had to write off €50 million on a failed IT project, a traffic management system that was meant to modernise the rail network. That is €50 million down the drain. It was not a minor project. It was described as central to how the railway network would be managed but it failed. This is an Irish Rail project but the NTA is the approving and overseeing authority for Irish Rail, so we need some oversight. Why was there no intervention in this instance? Before we extend the remit of the NTA any further, it is vital that it fix what is already broken. We need to start seeing genuine local engagement, not just tick-box consultation. We need to see clear, timely communication with communities and public representatives. We need to see faster, transparent responses to parliamentary questions. We need to see stronger oversight of project delivery and spending. Above all, we need to see accountability when things go wrong. Without those reforms, we are not expanding a service; we are expanding a system that people unfortunately do not trust despite its importance. Trust, once lost, is difficult to rebuild, but it can be rebuilt through engagement, accountability and willingness to listen to the people who rely on the services every day. I hope the Minister takes all these suggestions on board. It is important that the NTA work with communities. That is how we put a really good public transport system in place.

Sentiment score: 0.02