Public Transport
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04
============================================================

Jerry Buttimer (FG), Cork South-Central

If I may digress for a second, I encourage the Senator to go over in a minute to the NTA briefing because it is not the first time he has raised this matter. He has been a very strong proponent of this. The next generation ticketing was initially introduced as part of Dublin BusConnects and then going nationwide. I am not being defensive here but it is important to get it right. There needs to be careful planning, approvals and co-ordination with multiple different external organisations in terms of design and installation. The important point is to get it absolutely right because if not, the Senator will correctly come back in here and say it has been a completely diabolical and mismanaged project. We should travel with haste in the context of the project being implemented safely, correctly and within budget and then there is the whole piece around that next generation ticketing and the validators on the entire public transport fleet and stations. The Senator makes a very good point. There is complication and complexity and I am not quite sure why we have to make it so difficult. As somebody who is not an expert, I am looking at it like the Senator and asking why it cannot be done quicker. I hope when we do this - and I will ask the NTA in a minute when I go over to the briefing - that we get it right. It is about the next generation ticketing. It is about ensuring the solution works nationwide. I thank the Acting Chair for her indulgence.

---

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/2026-03-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-04