Public Transport and Fare Increases: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West

The Minister and everyone here knows these fares are illogical. We have a cost of-living crisis. Again, the Minister knows and everyone knows that people are really struggling. We want to get people out of cars and into public transport, and the Government doing this by increasing fares. It is completely counterproductive. People are talking about average increases of 15%. In Dublin, the short Leap fare is going to increase by 33%. I have been speaking to people in my constituency. They are very frustrated and angry. They are really going to be hit by this. The Dublin short cash fare is going to increase by 35% from €2 to €2.70. The Government talks about services and the need to balance the public service obligation, PSO, and what is given but it has a massive budget surplus. Surely the logical thing to do was give the NTA sufficient funding so that it did not have to increase fares. People are really frustrated by this. They see that it is a bad decision and it is bad policy. I would really call on the Minister to reverse this decision because we need to move away from cars. We need our cities to actually have decent public transport.
My concern is that what is behind this is a drive to the privatisation of public services and public transport. We have an increase in the likes of Go-Ahead Ireland and private operators being given public routes. Are these fares about incentivising more private involvement in our public services? Is it about making them commercially attractive for private operators? Go-Ahead, for example, which runs 30 routes, is an international company. It is owned in Australia and somewhere else. Why do we have private international companies running our public transport system? The Minister is shaking his head again and saying this is not true, but I would question whether it is.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29