The central purpose of the Bill is to allow the NTA use its expertise to expand our regional cities' transport services and bring them up to a more uniform standard. The Green Party supports streamlining of services but the purpose of streamlining needs to be to make things more effective. The Government seems to be doing everything in its power to counter any such efficiency effects. I questioned the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, about this Bill in February and was told it was on the priority publication list for the spring session. Then it was moved to the priority publication list for the summer legislative programme and it was only published in mid May. I am confused as to why this was the case, particularly because at the joint Oireachtas committee I sit on, we decided to waive pre-legislative scrutiny for this legislation in October of last year. That was a decision of Opposition and Government TDs on the committee to move the Bill along in order to support the roll-out of the Cork BusConnects as quickly as possible. When you compare the published Bill to the draft available last year, it seems only 13 words have changed. The Government talks extensively about the €24.3 billion allocated to public transport as part of the national development plan. We have been told this will result in the delivery of, for example, MetroLink by 2035. How does the Government expect the public to believe it can deliver on promises like that when simply altering two sections of this Bill to help the NTA run regional bus services in Cork has taken almost a year? Managing existing public transport services is probably the least ambitious part of the list of public transport plans. If this is any indication of how the Government will proceed, things are looking pretty bleak. During our time in government, the Green Party introduced or enhanced 180 bus routes for rural areas in just four years. At one stage, a new or enhanced bus route was being launched every single week. That progress has been stalled, the planned routes are being left unfunded and promises to communities all over this country are being broken. The most immediate impact of this Bill will be felt in the Minister of State's city, Cork, in terms of the delivery of BusConnects. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, said in April of this year that he was acutely aware of public transport concerns in Cork. The Minister of State will know from national newspaper headlines earlier this year that there were nearly 3,000 complaints made about Cork bus services in the year prior to that particular statement. Yet it somehow took a full month for the final approval of this legislation to be provided. That had been sitting on the Minister's desk since August. Some 10% of complaints made about bus services in Cork were made about one route, namely the route serving University College Cork, MTU and Cork University Hospital. That means students, doctors, nurses, patients and family members have been impacted by inaction and by the slowness of the Government's delivery of this legislation. I do not think that is acceptable. I am sure that as a TD for that area, the Minister of State does not think it is acceptable either. The people deserve an answer about why this particular legislation, which is essential before any of that work on Cork BusConnects can take place, has taken so long. While I welcome the fact the Bill has finally been published, that question about why so much time has been lost is really important. The Government's Project Ireland 2040 strategy was published in 2018, and it set out that the Cork BusConnects project would be completed by 2027. The phased implementation of the different bus routes was meant to begin by 2023, so we are now three years behind that particular schedule. In February of this year, the NTA said that if this Bill was enacted, it hoped to submit the first of three packages of strategic transport corridors in Cork - the corridor based in the north of the city - by the end of quarter 2. So, because of the delay in enacting this particular legislation, there is now less than one month left if that particular timeline is going to be met and it is not going to be met. We all know that. The failure to meet those particular targets does not just impact the delivery of that first package, the corridor in the north of the city, it will have a knock-on impact on the implementation of the other two based in the south of Cork as the NTA's timeframe has these packages placed a further six months after the submission of the first. I have discussed this matter with my Green Party colleague, Councillor Oliver Moran. He has told me that local representatives are simply not willing to go out and speak to the public in Cork about the timelines that the NTA is giving them because they no longer have confidence in those timelines. They say that they do not trust the NTA to deliver on schedule anymore. Those local representatives have been burned too many times. They have gone out with a timeline, and it has been completely undermined by the lack of action. There is a lack of clarity on the funding for BusConnects Cork and that is creating a sense that the whole project is in stasis despite the fact there is palpable demand for these services among commuters and there is backing for these services among local representatives as well. I urge that the Government stops adding to those delays in this area and allows the necessary work to be undertaken for the delivery of BusConnects. It should allow the people who are waiting for these services, those students, nurses, doctors, patients, people from all walks of life who rely on public transport to at least see the potential, a horizon within which a better bus service will be delivered across Cork. Very significant political commitments were made. Timelines were set out. It essential that those timelines are delivered on.

Sentiment score: 0.11