Public Transport and Fare Increases: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Conor Sheehan (LAB), Limerick City

To be honest, this makes absolutely no sense. It is a political choice and a very bad one. It is a bad choice also from a climate change point of view. I was listening to the former Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan, on "Drive Time" the other day and I have to say, I could not have agreed more with him. It is a real pity that somebody like him is not in government at the moment. We spent €1 billion effectively chasing the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil in terms of fuel subsidies, something that is not even really working and that we are not going to be able to sustain indefinitely. We have climate, cost-of-living and energy crises, yet the Government is slapping 15% onto public transport fares because the capital plan for transport is not worth the paper it is written on. That is a fact. It is a complete fiction and the Government needs to plug the gap somewhere.
We know we are far too car dependent. We know that given the climate crisis we are all living through, even if some of us might be in denial about it, we need to get more people onto public transport. Through this decision, people who get the bus, the Luas and the train are the ones who are going to suffer. I wonder sometimes whether they should come out and grind the country to a halt to get the Government to listen to them. They are on packed trains and they have ghost buses. In some cases in Limerick, when you look at BusConnects, which was promised and then delayed three times, they do not have any bus at all. If the Government were serious about public transport, then it would fund it properly. We are spending €100 million per month at the moment and cutting public transport fares, or at the very least sustaining the reduction, is a cost-of-living support that puts money back in the pockets of ordinary workers, students and young people.

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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