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

Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

The Tánaiste told us we would have a budget for people who get up early in the morning to go to work but not if they get up early in the morning and go out to get a bus, Luas or train. The Government is saying those people will pay more than an extra €100 per year for the privilege of being on public transport that is inadequate and overcrowded. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, they are expected to fork out over €100 more per year. The NTA acknowledges fewer people will use public transport as a result. They will still have to go to work, college and so on. How will they get there? The Government is pushing people out of public transport and into cars in the middle of a climate crisis, which is incredible. This is 100% a political choice. A different political choice is possible. The cost of undoing this and not going ahead is €70 million. In the previous budget, the Government gave over €300 million in a special tax break to Google, about €400 million in a VAT cut to apartment developers and about €700 million to the fast food giants. To reverse this cut and go in the right direction, we should reduce fares and move towards free public transport, which is what we need. People are protesting. They were outside the Dáil today at 6 p.m. They will be on the streets again on Saturday at 1 p.m. in Parnell Square to build more and more pressure on the Government to reverse this hike.

---

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