I thank the Ceann Comhairle for choosing this matter and the Minister of State for coming in to deal with it. Under Connecting Ireland, two bus services were set up in Connemara. One goes from An Cheathrú Rua up through Screebe, Maam Cross, Cornamona, Clonbur, Ballinrobe to Claremorris. The other goes from An Cheathrú Rua to Screebe, but it then turns west and goes to Carna, An Caiseal, Roundstone, Ballyconeely and Clifden. These services have been welcomed, and each serves the communities in the areas mentioned. I am not saying that there are not huge numbers travelling from An Cheathrú Rua, for example, to Claremorris, but there are many people who travel by bus to Claremorris or Ballinrobe on the northern leg. Similarly, on the southern leg, they travel through Maam Cross to connect with other bus services.
There is a major snag with the two services, which is that, unlike Bus Éireann services whereby people can be picked up anywhere along the route, somebody in their wisdom decided that there would be fixed bus stops on these rural roads and that passengers would only be able to board or alight from buses at these locations.
Some of these are, believe it or not, 8 km or 14 km apart, so you would need a car to get to the bus. It is quite a farcical situation. As many people have said to me, if they take the car that far, they might as well go the whole way. Where are they meant to leave the car? The problem now is that the type of numbers we would have expected to use the bus and who are potentially there to use the bus are not using the bus.
I have been pursuing this issue for months and there was a promise that the number of bus stops would be reviewed. That would be a help but it would not be equal to the service as we have traditionally had it in rural Ireland, that if you are along the route, the bus would pick you up wherever you were. I was in the town the other day, on St. Patrick's Day to be exact. I was in a little housing estate and along a stretch of road, somewhere between a quarter and a half a mile, there were two bus stops. Then people think rural people can go 8 km to a bus stop. It kind of does your head in because what is reasonable in one place is reasonable in another.
There is another issue that has arisen. For example, Ros Muc used to have a main bus service. The bus going from Carna to Galway in the morning used to go into Ros Muc on the peninsula to pick up passengers, come back out to Gort Mór and go into Galway city, and the same thing in the evening. Now, it does not go in there and I can understand the reason for that because the people who are on the bus from Carna obviously do not want a big diversion. On the other hand, for the people of Ros Muc, this has been a matter of contention since the service started. The number of people using buses is increasing all the time and there should be a feeder bus into Ros Muc that would meet the main buses. It could be a minibus or whatever. It would be well patronised. One thing we know is, if there are good bus services, people will use them. If there are excellent bus services, they will use them even more. We did get an improvement in the radial buses into Galway city. They used to be badly patronised. Now there is only one complaint every day and that is that you cannot get on the buses because they are all full. Even the 11 p.m. bus out of Galway city is full.
