Public Transport
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-04
============================================================

Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West

I fully agree. It makes absolute sense to utilise existing routes. It makes sense from a sustainability perspective, from an efficiency perspective and, most importantly, from a public transport users' perspective. I will absolutely take that feedback back to the Minister for Transport. Orbital routes have been a success in most instances. There has been huge investment in them and that is because nowadays everybody does not necessarily need to be going to the city centre. That is not everybody's destination. It is about being able to provide people who work on the outskirts of Dublin with a better commuting option as well. They have really worked and I take on board the Deputy's feedback that it would work in this instance too.
Regarding the commercial operator itself, the decision to cease operations on this route was solely a matter for the company. The NTA has no legislative powers to refuse an application from an operator to either reduce or withdraw services. I appreciate that there are not direct routes and that is having an impact locally. On behalf of the Minister for Transport, I thank Deputy Moynihan for bringing this issue forward. I assure the Deputy that his concerns have been heard. I will convey his points, including his very good suggestion regarding the existing bus route, back to the Minister.

---

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/dail/2026-02-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:35+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-04