North Wicklow BusConnects
Deputy Whitmore says BusConnects is progressing too slowly and asks about plans for north Wicklow bus services. The Taoiseach says he is not fully up to date but will ask the Minister’s team to respond directly.
In 2018, the BusConnects plan was launched.
We knew it would take time to get that into place. Unfortunately, we have not seen the speed of implementation we should see. In my constituency of Wicklow, 58,000 people travel to work every year; only 2,500 of those travel by bus. There is huge potential to get people out of private cars and into buses, if the bus service was there. The BusConnects plan for north Wicklow is for a bus loop service for Bray and Greystones that would go around the different towns, a direct service between Bray and Enniskerry and feeder buses from the Southern Cross to the DART station. All of these bus services would be useful and worthwhile but they are not in place yet. They were meant to be in place in 2022 and then in 2023; now it will be 2024, apparently. Does the Taoiseach have an update on that?
