West Cork TD calls for end to bus 'price discrimination' in rural areas

People in rural parts of Cork are paying more than double what someone in Dublin would pay for the same distance travelled on a bus, Cork South West TD and leader of Independent Ireland Michael Collins has said.

Mr Collins, a member of the joint committee on transport and communications, raised the matter of “price discrimination” during the committees’ engagement with representatives from the National Transport Authority (NTA) in the Dáil this week.

He said people in his constituency and other rural parts of Cork and Ireland as a whole already have far less options when it comes to public transport, with services running less frequently and most people having to travel by car to get to their nearest bus stop, then they must also face a considerably more expensive ticket than the same distance would be in the capital.

Disadvantaged 

“People living in rural communities continue to be disadvantaged on the double through a lack of supporting transporting connectivity and the application of fares that can be at least 100% more than those applied in Dublin when it comes to travelling the same distance,” he said.

“I accept that the NTA has made some positive moves toward rectifying this issue through the National Fare Strategy and indeed I received an explicit acknowledgement from NTA interim chief executive Hugh Creegan that the current system is creating inequities. This is especially true for those living anywhere outside of the major Dublin area.

“But the fact of the matter is that the National Fare Strategy was published in 2023 and yet here we are over two years later and people in West Cork and other areas of rural Ireland are still being hammered through excessive fares.

“The strategy itself provides the example of a fare from Newtownmountkennedy in Wicklow to Dublin. That fare cost €2.80 to travel 30km with a passenger uptake of 32,925. Yet if someone travelled from Fermoy to another location in Cork, at a distance of 29km, the price jumped by 112% to €5.95, despite the fact that passenger uptake has increased hugely on Cork rural routes,” he said.

Fairer structure

Mr Collins called for “urgent movement on the National Fare Strategy policy commitments to introduce fairer structure with consistency for journeys of a similar distance” which he said would streamline prices across the rural and urban transport networks.

“Most importantly it will end the ongoing price discrimination that rural transport passengers continue to face on a daily basis.”