[James Howard]

I personally think that re-instating some peak-time usage limits would be reasonable. It would be fairly simple to implement a mechanism where proof of a medical appointment could be used as a means to excuse any peak-time restrictions. Removing the peak-time limits was utter ludicrous auction politics and have resulted in a system that is completely out-of-kilter with the rest of Europe.

I'm not proposing that the benefit should be done away but it is pretty silly that a quarter of the population can walk up to Heuston station and get on the 5PM train to Cork on a Friday evening for nothing. Even if there was a 10 euro surcharge for peak trains, that might make people who in general have flexible timetables choose a different time or different day to travel.

Something has to change where it has to got to a point where services are being withdrawn. In areas like north Longford where there example of Whartons service was used in the article, there is a very low base of working people and the vast majority of those people need to have a car due to the geographically distributed nature of work in the area. So basically, the only people using public transport services are pass holders.