Public Transport
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
============================================================

Louise O'Reilly (SF), Dublin Fingal West

This Topical Issue is about the fare hikes - or the unfair hikes, as we might call them. The people who live in my constituency already had their fares jacked up. Those who get the train from Balbriggan or Skerries were taken out of the Dublin commuter zone and had their fares increased by almost €100. That was only last year. We now have a situation whereby they will be asked to pay more. They are not getting any extra services; not an additional carriage will be added. The Government was very clear about that. They will get nothing extra but will pay more for the joy of squashing onto overcrowded trains and standing at the side of the road while ghost buses do not turn up. It is not fair. Added to that, we had the NTA at the committee this morning speaking to all the Government backbenchers who, God love them, are outraged at this but prepared to do absolutely nothing about it. The NTA confirmed this will not be for additional services. The Taoiseach was quite wrong when he told me it would be for additional services. The NTA was clear there will not be additional services and that the knock-on effect of this will be fewer people getting public transport. The Government does not give people an opportunity to get public transport unless it invests in it. It is not investing in it; it is just charging people more. It is a political decision, not a decision of the NTA. The Government can reverse it and it should.

---

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/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17