Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 14 June 2022
63. Deputy Kieran O'Donnell asked the Minister for Transport if he will retain the reduced public transport fares to help with the cost of living in 2023; if he has further considered reducing public transport fares; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30734/22]
View answer106. Deputy Alan Farrell asked the Minister for Transport if he will consider extending the 20% fare reduction on public transport journeys beyond the end of 2022; if he plans further fare reductions in Budget 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30547/22]
View answer122. Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill asked the Minister for Transport if public transport fares will be reduced further; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30454/22]
View answerI am taking Questions Nos. 63 and 122 in substitute for my colleague, Deputy Carroll MacNeill.
For the information of the House, there will be three times as much time allocated to these questions because they are grouped together.
Is it fair, a Chathaoirligh Gníomhaigh, that I take Question No. 63 on its own, that Deputy Farrell take Question No. 106 and that I then take Question No. 122 separately, which is six and a half minutes per slot?
We will deal with them separately and give them all the time that has been allocated to them.
I thank the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach. I wish to deal with what I regard as a very successful policy initiative on public transport where we have seen a 20% reduction in public fares. This has been a great success.
I have two questions. First, will the Minister of State look to extending the scheme beyond the end of 2022 and certainly into 2023? Second, has the Minister of State and the Department of Transport looked at further reductions in public transport fares? We want to encourage people to use public transport and to build on the positive initiative of this 20% reduction which is in place until the end of the year.
I thank the Deputy and am taking these questions on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Ryan.
We are acutely aware of the increase in the cost of living in recent months and the Minister recognises the impact that this has had on households across the country. For this reason, he was pleased to be able to introduce a 20% average fare reduction on public service obligation, PSO, public transport services until the end of this year.
This initiative is benefiting the hundreds of thousands of people across the country who use public transport every day. The Minister is delighted to report that passenger numbers are slowly returning to pre-Covid-19 figures. Last week, on average, PSO services carried about 84% of the numbers they carried before the pandemic. In fact, certain markets are reporting passenger levels well above 2019 levels, particularly on some of our Local Link, town and regional city services. All of these individuals are now benefiting from lower fare costs.
The 20% fare reduction comes on top of several other measures that we are progressing to encourage greater public transport patronage. For instance, there is the young adult Leap card, which provides an average 50% fare discount for those aged between 19 and 23 on both PSO and commercial services. There is also the Transport for Ireland, TFI, 90-minute fares scheme which means that adults now pay €2, young adults pay €1, and children pay just 65 cent to travel for up to 90 minutes on Dublin Bus, Luas and most DART, commuter rail and Go-Ahead Ireland services in Dublin. In May alone, the number of people who had a child Leap card, a student Leap card, or the new young adult Leap card increased by over 16,000, which is very encouraging.
While fare reductions are to be welcomed, the investment in additional services is also critical. For this reason, the Minister is committed to progressing core projects like BusConnects, Connecting Ireland and DART+, as well as improving existing services across the country.
That being said, public transport fare initiatives have a role to play in combatting the rising cost of transport and in encouraging modal shift. As such, the Minister would like to see the 20% fare reduction continue into 2023. He is acutely aware, however, of the competing pressures across the system and the finite Exchequer resources. The funding implications of all measures must be considered in the round so the Minister will work closely with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, and other Government colleagues, in the context of the 2023 Estimates process to see what we can do with regard to supporting public transport services.
I greatly welcome the commitment from Government and from the Minister for Transport to look towards extending the reduced public transport fares into 2023. This is a very welcome initiative both in the 20% general reduction and for the young adults, where that is effectively a 60% reduction because it is 50% after the 20%.
In my own constituency of Limerick City, adult fares have gone down within the city from €1.68 to €1.35 which is a 33 cent reduction. For young adults, one is looking at a reduction of 60%, where the fare has gone down to 65 cent, which is a reduction of over €1. These are very welcome initiatives.
When will we have clarity as to whether these reduced fares will be extended into 2023? Does the Minister of State see scope, apart from the current reduced fares, that there may be further reductions in the fares or of extending their scope and the percentage of the reduction?
The decisions on this will be through the 2023 Estimates process, when we will be discussing this issue with our Government colleagues.
It has only been a number of weeks since the 20% fare reductions have come into place on the young adult Leap card. The National Transport Authority, NTA, will be carrying out detailed research to determine the impact of fare reductions at that stage when the schemes have been in place for a reasonable amount of time. That will give us far more information. The fact that there has been significant uptake in public transport usage is a very positive indicator at this point in time. That NTA research will also inform our decisions on this matter.
The response of the Minister of State to the grouped questions is very welcome. The key question for us in the context of a cost-of-living crisis is to ask whether the fare reductions that have already been introduced are sustainable. I welcome the Minister of State's comments that she would very much like to see them being extended into 2023 but that is, I suppose, a budgetary decision that we will make in October. The statistics that the Minister of State has been supplied with by the providers across the country, and most acutely for me, by Dublin Bus, Luas and Iarnród Éireann, are very critical. Citing figures like the 84% and above rates of usage compared with pre-Covid-19 levels is encouraging.
In the context of full employment which we have almost reached, I would have thought that we might have been a little bit higher than that. Sustaining these fare reductions is not just good for public transport users but it is also good for the environment in respect of the unnecessary vehicular journeys that are taken when public transport is available. I will come back with further questions later.
On the question of people's working patterns now and hybrid working, I will furnish some further information. As I said, overall PSO passenger numbers are approximately 84% of pre-Covid-19 levels. Passengers are returning in good numbers in most markets with Local Link and Bus Éireann's town services in Limerick and Galway all reporting levels at or similar to 2019 levels.
Increasingly, it appears that the primary cause of reduced total passengers is office-based workers travelling less. This is consistent when considering that pre-Covid-19 analysis showed white-collar worker commuters to be 30% to 35% of total demand. A 50% reduction in these trips would account for 15% to 17.5% of overall demand. This supported the anecdotal evidence that many office workers are working a hybrid model of two or three days per week at home. Fare reductions are to be welcomed but investment in additional services is also valuable for customers and communities. We need to ensure that we maintain the right balance between those factors.
I thank the Minister of State again. It is essential that we as a Government support the reduction in the burden on people, particularly in the context of the cost-of-living crisis. I, of course, welcome the 50% existing reduction for students and the 20% reduction for everybody else and I would very much like to see that continue into 2023 and beyond.
If further scope is available to us in the sustainability of the fare reductions I would like us to do it on an ongoing basis and that it would become a cornerstone of the Department of Transport's policy to try to reduce the burden on people and to encourage them to use public transport rather than their own private vehicles.
The Minister of State mentioned the 90-minute scheme. Of course, it is extremely welcome but it does exclude two major commuter towns in my constituency in Dublin which is unfair. Skerries and Balbriggan are excluded from the 90-minute fare. I believe that if you are a Dub you should be treated the same as the other Dubs, to be quite frank. There are issues with fares increasing when you go into Meath and Louth where the fares jump quite a significant amount. I have said here before that I think people who are using public transport should not be unnecessarily penalised for a couple of extra kilometres to get to Laytown, Bettystown or other places like that. It is unnecessary. We need to encourage more people to use public transport, not fewer. I would ask that the Minister consider that in the context of budgetary discussions.
I agree. We want to encourage people to use public transport. That is the aim with the 20% price reduction and the young adult card. I will relay his point on those issues to the Minister. No matter where you draw the line there will be someone outside it but I hear exactly what he is saying. We want to get people out of their cars and incentivise them to use public transport where they can and make it more affordable for them to do that.
I want to take the opportunity to raise an anomaly for public transport users. With the 90-minute TFI fare at the moment, someone is better off if they pay for their bus journey by Leap card than if they had purchased in advance the annual tax-saver ticket. In fact they are 20% better off. The tax-saver scheme was introduced to provide a tax-efficient benefit to commuters. It is no longer fit for purpose. It is 20% more expensive to use it twice a day five days a week. We need to fix that and reduce the cost for commuting for people across Dublin.
I am taking this question for the Minister so I will raise that with him and ask him to respond to the Deputy directly.
