There is the issue in the legislation itself, there is the bigger picture nationally and then of course there are the more parochial local issues. I am not quite sure, but I know I have been shifted around in the speaking rota so I will deal with the local issues first in case I have to cede the time later on in the discussion and, if not, I will use it to elaborate on the bigger issues. The Government is talking about widening the NTA's remit across the country. I have an issue with the NTA's remit here in Dublin that I have mentioned before. One of the questions on my Bus Correct survey of two years ago was whether or not the NTA should be managed more directly and, in a Dublin context, that would be from a directly elected mayor. This is casting no aspersions on the staff working in the NTA, who I acknowledge are dedicated, but as an institution and organisation the NTA is not fit for purpose. It is not fit for reflecting the views expressed to it by individuals collating all that information. So far with BusConnects I have found that it is discriminating against people with disabilities and older people with bus passes. They are the ones who are least able to hop on, hop off and use the apps. Maybe the hope is that by the time the whole thing rolls out they will have died out, which I think would be quite a cynical approach. If we look at people with disabilities for example, at the moment usually only one wheelchair can fit on a bus. It is hugely discommoding for someone to have to get off a bus and try to get another wheelchair-accessible bus to get from A to B, when they were able to do that in one go originally. Similarly with older people, I have used the app and in some cases it is faster to get from A to B by timing stuff and looking at maps and when it works, it works well. As I have said before as well, when BusConnects rolls out and if it is properly staffed, people in my survey expressed confidence that it would work quite well and when it was rolled out and properly staffed, it would be like the London Underground, but overground. However, it is not working like that at all. That is because of buses not turning up and staff shortages. Every time a new route is put on an existing route has to be robbed from. People have not faith in the process or that the spine routes will have enough capacity. On the one hand, I have people involved in Dublin Bus telling me that the company could put an auxiliary route on halfway along to catch up where buses are already full. Then the NTA comes back and says that it will allow that but if it happens two or three days on an ongoing basis, a full route will have to be provided. That is not necessarily workable because those auxiliary buses are there for specific instances, particularly with all the hybrid working right now, and when we add in concerts, school events, weekend events, etc. There needs to be the flexibility of an auxiliary service whereby if people are waiting too long, an auxiliary bus can be started halfway along a route. At the same time, there are L buses that are not turning up, so what is supposed to be a half-hourly service turns into an hourly service. In Lucan we have a number of GAA clubs, one of which is Garda Westmanstown Gaels, located between Lucan and Clonsilla. If the L52 does not turn up and people are trying to go to training, for example, they are stuck. The traffic along that route between Clonsilla and Lucan is a nightmare at the best of times, but particularly at peak time in the evenings when people are trying to get somewhere. With another GAA club, Lucan Sarsfields, it is different in that there is not a bus route in the first place. People have no choice but to drive there. I do not want to get into mentioning specific routes that have problems but I could list some, such as the 13, about which people have expressed views. The 80 is a temporary solution and we will be back arguing what is going to happen with the 80 in a couple of months time. There are issues with the L51 and L52 not turning up. We have issues with the C spines. We have an issue in Adamstown where, because of delays, the NTA ran a route down Adamstown Boulevard for two years as a temporary route, pending finding another temporary route that is going closer to the long-term route. Meanwhile, they have built another 5,000 houses and people are wondering why they cannot have that route along the boulevard. From Adamstown Station, along Adamstown Boulevard there could be a reconstituted 25 route through the village and into town. In essence, there is no response to the needs of users when they express their frustration at the bus service. That is what I mean when I say the NTA is not fit for purpose. A directly elected mayor for the greater Dublin area or for Dublin could look at these issues, take on board what people are saying, respond and, if a mistake is made, adjust it again. The NTA seems to be coming from a position of it knowing what is best. It does not, because if it did people would not be cheesed off constantly. That brings me to the bigger national issue in terms of what we need to be doing for routes. I am not from a rural constituency, but in the lifetime of the previous Government we had a massive roll-out of rural Local Link services, which seems to have slowed down a little bit now. I am all for people being able to live in the rural communities they grew up in. I am also supportive of bringing some of the population from hard-pressed areas like Dublin to rural areas. I have mentioned before that in terms of policy for the software and pharmaceutical industries we could have a golden triangle between Tullamore, Mullingar and Athlone. There are lots of small towns and villages around there that could do with a few extra students for schools. West of the Shannon the same thing could apply with hybrid working or community working hubs where people should be able to get a local bus along a route and work from home some of the time and repopulate the areas where the schools are losing teachers. While the population nationally and in major urban centres is going up, it is falling in rural areas. We need to support rural Ireland with a transport system that works. In one of my first speeches during my first term as a TD I remarked on how the train network in the 1950s was massively bigger than it is now. There is no reason in the world why we should not be building that rail gauge as well and focusing on that type of investment. I want to refer to our planning laws. In south Dublin, the Government wants to be seen to be doing something about the housing crisis. In an area of south Dublin there is zoning for 56,000 housing units, with 12,000 with planning applications in situ. The Government is now proposing another 9,000 units in areas such as Lucan, where we have a massive number of houses yet to be built in areas like Clonburris and Adamstown, where people cannot get basic amenities like parking spaces and where there is no solution for putting in a cable to charge an EV. People are told not to worry about it because they are right beside a train station. It is not utopia. Deputy Shane Moynihan had a go at me on "The Late Debate" for saying that in 20 years these are going to be ghettos. I did not say that because they are badly built but because if there are not amenities and infrastructure and a proper 15-minute city where people can walk and have all the facilities beside each other, it is going to create social unrest. In Adamstown we have a related policy where my proposal for a department store was turned down by South Dublin County Council because it would upset the retail hierarchy of Liffey Valley and Tallaght. Therefore, people have to get the bus to Liffey Valley to do their shopping, or a lot of the time they have to drive because they cannot rely on the bus turning up. Transport and planning are absolutely interlinked. I have not got absolute clarity on it but I know there is a plan to upgrade the grid for the DART+ South West but I am not absolutely sure. I have put in a few parliamentary questions about when that grid capacity will be guaranteed as well as the funding for the DART+ South West. Until the Government provides that service to cater for the existing planned extra 10,000 houses between Lucan and Clondalkin it cannot talk about rezoning more land and creating more unsustainable areas. Similarly, the Luas for Lucan was originally supposed to be completed by now. Now, however, looking at the renewed emerging preferred route it will not be completed until 2036. We are living in a public transport desert where people do not have sufficient access to get around the greater Dublin area in the way that is required. People can go in and out of town and I acknowledge there have been improvements between Blanchardstown, Lucan, Clondalkin and Tallaght, but we do not have enough of the critical short-term routes that are reliable so that people will say, "You know what, I will put the kids on the bus and we will go to the crèche that way," or, "I know I can get to work reliably, I will drop them off en route and get back on within the 90-minute plan." It has not worked and we need more direct political control along with independent analysis of the services to make sure we have something that is fit for purpose.

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