Public Transport Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Nicole Ryan (SF), Administrative Panel I thank the Minister of State for being here. At the outset, I will say he has taken this Commencement matter from me before. He is not the Minister who I had hoped would be here this morning, unfortunately, although that is nothing against him. I am back with this Commencement matter for the third time. The responses I have received to date have been wholly inadequate. Each time, I raise this on behalf of real people who have issues trying to use a service to get to college. Each time, instead of getting straight answers, I receive vague replies about Midleton, Cobh and investments in parts of Cork that I do not have anything to do with and that do not matter to my constituents. Today I had hoped to ask the Minister two specific questions. The first relates to the lack of a Monday morning train from Banteer to Cork. As I outlined previously, there is no early-morning train from Banteer to Cork on Mondays. There is a 5.32 a.m. train from Millstreet which does not stop in Banteer and arrives in Cork far too early. The next one is at 8.15 a.m. and it arrives at 9.15 a.m., which is too late. That is not acceptable when there are students who are trying to attend college and cannot live in the city due to the housing crisis. That means people are forced into cars, there are longer journeys and there is more expense. It completely undermines the claim that the Government is serious about climate change when it expects people in rural Ireland to drive cars to wherever they need to go. We talk endlessly in this House about encouraging public transport use. We cannot expect people to use a service that simply does not exist when they need it most. When will an early morning Monday train from Banteer to Cork be restored? My second is on the Leap card from Millstreet. The Leap card is supposed to be the backbone of the public transport system of this country. It is supposed to ease travel, make it cheaper and more accessible but, once again, rural towns are left behind. In the reply to my last Commencement matter I was told the Leap card was not the responsibility of the Department of Transport. With respect to the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, that is simply not credible. Either he is the Minister for Transport or he is not and either integrated ticketing falls under his remit or it does not. Right now people in Millstreet are being told no one is responsible. When will the Leap card be extended to Millstreet rail services? I do not want to hear that there is a travel card. People know that. We know Leap cards exist. It was the Minister of State who asked me how many people this affected. I did a survey in the constituency and received 79 responses. I can share the issues people raised. These are college students who use public transport. One student said they stay with a friend in Cork city on Sunday night just so they can get to college on Monday morning. That is ridiculous. My two questions are simple. When will the Monday morning service from Banteer to Cork be restored? When will the Leap card be extended to Millstreet? If the Minister cannot do that, he should just say it cannot be done. I ask the Minister of State not to give me waffle and say it cannot be done and that he commit to coming back to give an update on when it will be done. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-21