Flexible Work and Commuter Delays: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Alan Kelly (LAB), Tipperary North

I commend my colleague Deputy Mark Wall on bringing this forward. For anyone watching us discussing a motion on congestion and the requirement for flexible work, it is absolutely ironic that a man who left his house before 6.30 a.m. is walking through the door of Dáil Éireann at 10.05 a.m. Why? It is because there were accidents on the motorway and everybody across the commuting areas of Kildare, Tipperary, Laois and other areas was held up because of it. This was not planned but it is some statement to prove why we need to deal with this issue in the short term, not the medium term or the long term.
What is going on is insane. The motorways into Dublin and the M50 are car parks. Accidents do happen and it is crazy that there are not emergency vehicles from TII on the slip roads and the hard shoulder, parked up and ready to get vehicles involved in incidents moved immediately. In any other jurisdiction, that is normal. We need it not just on the M50 - we need more on the M50 - but we also need it on the M7, M8 and all other orbital routes into Dublin. We also need it in other areas such as Galway, Limerick and Cork. From my area, getting into Limerick at certain times in the morning and coming out of it in the evening is chronic even though it is only a short distance obviously because of the volume of people using cars and the lack of public transport options.
The lack of public transport options is real. Over a decade ago, Portlaoise became a hub for commuting to Dublin. Lots of people moved down there. Some people who worked here moved down there. A huge reason was the great train service. The biggest issue was where people could park when going to get the train. Now it has gone down as far as Roscrea and Nenagh. There is not the rail line capacity or the frequency of trains. There are not even the services because the service on the Ballybrophy line is so dire. I would use that to commute to Dublin but I cannot because I cannot rely on it and it does not meet my requirements. That is not acceptable.
We also need to ensure that this gradual push towards pulling people back into work stops. The right to flexible work and the right to work from home must be enshrined. Where it needs to be enshrined most quickly is with us and the public service. In some Departments and some organisations, the pull back into work is high and some of the people who are late for work this morning are people who are working for the State. We all know that some people cannot do flexible work and cannot work from home, but for those who can, we should encourage it as much as possible to avoid the issues we are dealing with.
There are other practical measures that need to be done with park and ride, bus lanes, frequency of trains, integrated ticketing and transport hubs. How come late night bars and nightclubs can have staggered closing times but we cannot have staggered times for work so that people can travel at different times as regards their work hours? Practical changes like that would help alleviate the gridlock that we are seeing coming into Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and everywhere else.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21