Public Transport
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-18
============================================================

Louis O'Hara (SF), Galway East

This reset the Minister is talking about means fewer new services. That is what the NTA is saying, and the impact of that is massive. I know the impact of it in Athenry, and the Minister knows the story there, where we have been promised a PSO bus service for the past two years since the previous service ended. We still do not have that bus service.
We have been told that the 6.50 a.m. train, the only early morning train service at around that time between Athenry and Galway, is ending in six weeks' time at the end of July due to a lack of funding. Athenry is a large and growing town with a population of over 5,000 people. We have Dexcom now and up and running in the town, and many people commute in and out of Galway city. There are serious problems on rail services, with dangerous overcrowding at peak times.
We are being left waiting for these services. We are being told that the money is not there for the new bus services or to maintain this vital, early morning train service. There is no justification for us being left to wait any longer. I presented the Minister with a petition signed by 1,700 people within Athenry calling for these services to be maintained. Will the Minister ensure that that happens?

---

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/2026-06-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-18