Cllr fed up ‘going round the houses’ on transport issues

Transport proved the hot topic at Meath Co Council's March meeting this week.

In particular, Independent Cllr Gillian Toole said she wanted a meeting of councillors with TII (Transport Infrastructure Ireland), Bus Eireann and Irish Rail in the same room and the same time to answer pretty searching questions into the state of transport in the county.

Cllr Toole said the problems were common to all six municipal districts but a meeting for each of those districts was “not very time friendly, not sustainable”. The issues were efficiency of service, linking with trains and integration of public transport, direct-to-Dublin services, and the provision of bus stops.

Her suggestion was that the Cathaoirleach of each municipal district should pool all the questions and the agenda drawn up. Prior planning could prevent poor performance.

Six individual meetings would only drag out the whole process. A repetitive issue that came up regularly in her own MD was that of time tabling. The only problem was that they got different answers from different transport authorities. The councillors “trotted into Dublin” to one authority and got one answer. She didn’t think councillors had ever met Irish Rail.

She said that they were “going round the houses” on the issue of transport yet at the same time passengers/constituents were late for work or late for college. There were billboards up all over the place saying “End the Commute” but the reality was that for many people the commute was still there.

“Our job is to represent people’s concerns, make things as easy as possible for them, and in the process than we work smarter not harder”.

“To be honest I'm fed up meeting this one, that one and the other one and nothing ever changes. Until we get everyone in the one room and hear all sides of the story and put our point across, we are not representing the people who put us here properly.

Fianna Fail Cllr Tommy Reilly said he thoroughly agreed with Cllr Toole. Only last week 14 people who were students were left standing at a bus stop because their bus was cancelled. It was a disgraceful performance by Bus Eireann, he said.

His party colleague Cllr Damien O’Reilly said he was an advocate for public transport and “for getting it right” . He said planning application after planning application was being made for apartment blocks and there was no public transport available for the people who would live in them. They had been sounding off for eight or nine years and they had not seen one improvement. Budget after budget was blown on fancy marketing scheme after marketing scheme on individual projects yet there was still no integration.

Fine Gael Cllr Noel French said that he would be willing to accept meetings at municipal district level. It was his feeling that a joint meeting with the three authorities would not produce any miracles.

Reporting on a policy group meeting, council official Dara McGowan said there was no doubt that the three transport authorities would come in to meet everyone. In order to get the best out of a meeting the suggestion had been made that the three authorities be invited in for a full morning before the statutory meeting where and each of the municipal district could come in and discuss the problems in their area.

Cathaoirleach Cllr Nick Killian insisted that the meeting be held in public. The councillors agreed to this course of action and an attempt will be made to set up a meeting for early April.