It is not satisfactory. There is a whole range of circumstances in different parts of the country. A significant amount of money will be made available to provide additional bus services and to meet the public health obligations. I will be talking to Deputy Foley to see if it changes the circumstances if, as the Deputy says, one child from a family is getting the bus and the other is not able to do so. We need to address and show flexibility to the companies to make sure those sort of operations are not tolerated.

The Deputy is right. We live on one island. We do not have a physical border and never will again, to my mind.

People crossing over and back is a part of everyday life. In those circumstances, we need to have complete co-operation between our health services, North and South, to make sure the risk of infection is minimised. At the recent North-South Ministerial Council, the administration from Stormont came down to Dublin Castle and it was a good meeting. A large part of it was made up of a presentation from the office of the Chief Medical Officer in Northern Ireland with Dr. Ronan Glynn, our own acting Chief Medical Office…

Bus Éireann came to us with its proposed reallocation and redeployment. The company has to manage its resources and we agreed to it. They were various caveats or conditions related to that. One is that they are looking to redeploy bus services in Cork to improve the services into and in the city. I was aware a number of years ago that the same issue was arising in Fermoy, Mitchelstown, Cahir and all the towns along that line. It was difficult for Bus Éireann Expressway to compete on the Dublin service because it wa…

I am pleased to be here to discuss this issue with Deputy Stanton. The improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is the statutory responsibility of the relevant local authority in accordance with the provisions of section 13 of the Roads Act 1993. Works on those roads are funded from the council's own resources supplemented by State road grants. The extent of the cutbacks in grant funding during the post-2008 recession meant that grant funding for road improvement schemes had to be curtailed because e…

I am very familiar with the area. My grandfather grew up in Glounthaune where we had a family farm so I know the area well. I will look closely at the file. There is a whole range of developments in the Cork harbour and city area. We need to develop Cork as a counterbalance to Dublin. We need infrastructure in Cork, which includes Cobh and Carrigtwohill, Ballincollig on the other side, and Blarney. The city has spread a great deal. We need to bring life back into Cork but we also need to look after the 15,000 peopl…

As Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, I have responsibility for policy and overall funding in respect of public transport. The NTA has statutory responsibility for securing the provision of public passenger transport services nationally. The NTA also has national responsibility for integrated local and rural transport including management of the rural transport programme, which now operates under the Local Link brand. The school transport scheme comes under the remit of my colleague, the Minister for Educat…

The Deputy is correct that this is not the only example. It is a cruel and critical problem for every family affected. If I recall correctly, 20,000 students throughout the country are on bus services not provided by the Department of Education and Skills. Many of these services are in particular difficulty because of the 50% rule concerning capacity of bus services. The local Flexibus service is a brilliant company, but there is a clear difference between an operation of that type and a bus service run exclusively…

My apologies.

Those 20,000 children have not been excluded. That was an historic reference to the number of children who were on private bus services not operated by the Department of Education and Skills. In most instances, these children travel longer distances than to the local school. For that reason, they are not included within the scheme run by the Department of Education and Skills. The Deputy referred to 6,000 fewer school transport tickets having been issued. That issue, which falls under the remit of the Department of…

I met delegates from four taxi representative groups the week before last. It was a useful and productive meeting at which I had an opportunity to hear about the impact of Covid-19 on the taxi industry and the representatives' proposals as to how the industry can best be supported through this difficult time. I undertook to meet representatives again in the near future once I had an opportunity to consider fully these issues with my Department and the NTA. I confirm that I intend following through on that commitmen…

I cannot give clear commitments on the matter now because we must sit down again with taxi representative groups in advance of so doing. As I stated to those groups, I wish to sit down with the Department and the NTA. I discussed the matter with the NTA this week. My Department had similar meetings with the NTA and will do so again next week before we have further discussions with the taxi representative groups. I wish to sit down with those groups. I listened to them identify the real and critical problems facing …

We will act quickly on this issue but we need to get it right. I need to work with the Department and the NTA to make sure we go back to the industry representatives with clear measures that are doable. Not all of them will be doable, but wherever a measure is possible, we will act, such as by extending the PUP into next year. The Government has not ruled out further revising the PUP if that is needed because the pandemic lasts longer or is more severe than expected. There is no shortage of support available. The €…

Rather than reading out the full reply I have before me, I will focus on the financial aspect of this issue. The fundamental problem is that there is no way to replace the passenger demand for taxis that has been lost during the pandemic. It will only return as the pandemic is brought under control and economic activity across all sectors recovers. However, the Government measures should ensure that operators who wish to remain in the industry will be able to do so, enabling them to thrive again once the pandemic a…

I would appreciate if the Deputy would provide me with details of the examples he gave. If there is an eight-week delay in processing the applications for the enterprise support grant, I would be keen to know that and I would check up with the relevant authorities as to why that happened. Similarly, if there are instances where an application under the credit guarantee scheme was refused only for the same bank to approve the loan under a separate scheme, I would appreciate if the Deputy would provide the details be…

Insurance is a critical issue, on which reports from the Central Bank and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission will have a material bearing. The Government will have to assess those reports and act on them to bring down the cost of insurance for everyone. With regard to the meeting with the taxi drivers and the range of issues that they rightly raised, the critical issues are the industry specific ones, including the lifetime of vehicles, access for taxis to bus lanes and protective measures within th…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 and 26 together. There are important and differing views on this issue across the House. It is a critical issue and we must consider whether to reopen phases 2 and 3 of the western rail corridor. Regardless of our views on this proposal, what we all agree on is that we need to make a decision soon. On 1 July, my Department received from Iarnród Éireann a copy of EY's report on the proposal. That report was prepared in accordance with the commitment given in the current national de…

All of those investments in public transport from Dublin make sense. They have to make sense. One cannot proceed unless one has a good business case. There needs to be the same for rail investment in the west. I have mentioned the freight issue in various meetings I have had with several Deputies. I did so because, if we try to win this project on the basis of it being a commuting route from Tuam or Claremorris to Galway, an argument based on those numbers will be difficult to win.

However, if one considers the route in a wider strategic context of economic development, it is only when passenger rail services operate on the back of what is really the key strategic benefit - an industrial rail freight capability that brings employment and manufacturing to a region that has clean power, clean water and a highly skilled manufacturing workforce - that this starts to make sense. To my mind, none of the reports to date has examined the question in that broader context. No one has asked the big 20-y…

The need for this is shown by the fact that we must ask certain questions. For example, are there constraints on the Ballina-Dublin-Waterford rail freight services? I believe there may be. It is this type of question that we need to answer if we are to make a business case for a national freight rail strategy. The reports and some people claim that rail freight will not work in Ireland. I question that.