I raise an issue which is very important not just for my constituency but for many constituencies across the country, namely, public transport. The provision of public transport is something that has been highlighted in my constituency, where in the recent past Bus Éireann decided to cut back on some of the services it provides between Galway and Limerick. That service is route 51. It brings into focus the whole concept of providing public transport and how the National Transport Authority, NTA, which has the vested power to decide on these things, takes decisions to reduce services at a time when we are talking about climate action, bringing in a carbon tax and penalising people who have cars because they must pay more for fuel. At the same time we are now taking away services from people who would otherwise go to work on these buses, either to Galway or Limerick. If one takes Gort, Labane or Ardrahan, all of these areas are now affected in that they do not have the same services they had. Thus services are not available in the evening for people who want to come from work in Galway or Limerick back to south County Galway. Likewise, Bus Éireann removed bus stops in Kilreekil for no apparent reason, other than it said people were not using them, but we must incentivise people to use public transport. We must also make it accessible to people with disabilities. How is this to be changed?

I have spent much time working with Local Link in County Galway, trying to create routes to feed into bus and train services, yet every proposal we put in is turned down by the NTA. I had very good proposals from the Caherlistrane-Headford area, and from Corrandulla to feed into this, to take cars off the road and get people to go to work on buses. The public transport is not there; it is not being provided. People are scratching there heads and thinking that they still need the car and that it is essential. The message coming from Bus Éireann to people in my constituency is that they must continue to use the car even more because the public transport will not be provided.

It is important we look at this when we are talking about climate action. I know well the Minister wants to deliver on public transport but we must see a plan on how that is going to be done so that in our constituencies we can tell people that this is the service they are going to get. Public transport is going to take cars off the road. If we are going to work with that, we need to start now and reverse the decision made by Bus Éireann.

Following on from the previous question, there is a lot of emphasis on urban Ireland because of the issue of apartment living. We must be very clear that in the changes we need to make, it is about rural and urban. It is about towns and villages, country and city. This is particularly the case with meeting the climate change challenges we face where we need a switch to public transport and to reduce the demand to travel by creating services in our towns, so everything is close by and people do not have to travel all the time. However, as well as the commitment to housing mentioned earlier, this requires a commitment to public transport. Again, in the context of the Covid crisis, we should look at the figures. The spending is mainly because of the crisis but it is still an indication this is important. In 2019, €300 million was spent on subventing public transport. That increased to €610 million last year and €650 million this year. The rural bus services are particularly important because as the Deputy said, there are many people who do not have access to a car and who have just as much of a right and entitlement to be able to move around, get to the hospital, to other appointments or to wherever they need to go to.

One good bit of news is that I met the commercial bus operators. Bus Éireann also runs these kind of commercial operations with specific supports to keep them going. I refer not just to the public service obligation, PSO, services but also commercial operators because they were in real difficulty during the Covid crisis. I met them in recent months. The support was due to come to an end and they asked that I keep it going for another few months because we are coming to the end of this, lockdown is starting to ease and we do not want to fall at the last hurdle and lose services at the last minute. I talked to the NTA, as did the industry groups. I was very glad to commit to extending that into the summer months, so we do not have a cliff edge in support for public bus services.

Bus Éireann has a key role. It is true the company is changing the routes, adding some new routes and taking some services from others; it must manage that as it sees fit. It is also operating these services, the likes of route 51, in a commercial market where there are a lot of private operators as well. Bus Éireann must allocate on the basis of where it sees it can best meet customer demand. We have given a clear commitment that a reduction in services cannot be done where it leaves people without a commensurate service, be that private or otherwise, so we will not leave people without.

I have another bit of news, which is a positive development. To take up what Deputy Canney said about Local Link and the need for additional services, recognising that and that we need to change and be more efficient is important, the NTA has been working with Leitrim County Council on a pilot scheme I hope to announce shortly. It would be for three years and would look at a really innovative way of combining our HSE public transport services with Local Link and bus services so we start developing new rural bus transport services. Let us not do it the way we always did but look to innovate and try to create new services. It has not been announced yet but I hope it will be really significant for the people of County Leitrim. There is potential if the pilot works for it to be spread elsewhere, whereby we increase, enhance and allow the people of rural Ireland make the switch to a better system using public transport in a low-emissions world.

I thank the Minister and welcome his announcement about the pilot scheme for County Leitrim. I agree we cannot have more of the same, where there is a mismatch. We must start with the very basics, look at where the rural populations are, where they are migrating to work, how they are going to work and how they come back home in the evenings. If Members listen to the AA Ireland traffic reports, they will hear about Claregalway. Every evening we hear about Bóthar na dTreabh in Galway. The people who are causing the congestion, if I can put it that way, are the workers from the east of the county who are trying to access the city. We must provide the services so they can access the city in a different way. Some of the finest private bus operators are operating from east County Galway to bring people into the city. However, we cannot get a bus lane built from Claregalway into Galway. It has been planned for maybe the last ten years and still is not done. It is a very simple process as there is no land acquisition required; it is just a question of getting it done. Therefore, it is important we change the headwreck, as I might say, and get on with the job.

I met some of those County Galway private bus operators last summer and the Deputy is absolutely right that they run a first-class service. The really annoying thing is that just before Covid struck they were actually seeing a massive expansion in their services. They were looking at new routes like east-west, north-south and a whole range of different ones. They were finding that as soon as they put new routes on, customer demand was rising to meet them; they were on a big expansion plan. I hope we can get back to that.

A connected issue with respect to what we must do in transport to have a low-emissions future is in our roads programme, which will still be significant. Our public transport programme will be bigger and be enhanced but it is also important we maintain roads and build new roads to get over where we have pinch points and problems. As we look at this climate plan, I have been saying that within the roads programme, we must really focus on bypasses of towns, and a large number of them. They do not have to be big motorways or huge expensive projects. We can spend our money wisely and have it go further and be spent more widely by doing a whole series of small bypasses. These will often be single carriageway but they will get traffic out of the bottleneck. If buses must go into town to pick up passengers that is fine but if they do not, they will not be stuck in traffic. That is also going to be important for the bus system. We need to go with lots of bypasses.