[paddyb180285]

I could have been working down in Clonmel for 6 months. If I were travelling by rail, I would have had to make 3 changes. The first change I would have had to have made would be at Connolly for the Luas/90 Bus to Heuston Station. Then Heuston would have been the second change to Limerick Junction. I would have been changing here for another train to Clonmel. That would have come to a total of 4 different modes of transport, three of which were taken in the Dublin area (what a joke!). A large part of this is down to the disuse of the Phoenix Park.

Cities such as Waterford, Limerick and Clonmel are all too spread out. Becuase of this, a lot people end up living nowhere near their respective stations. In these particular cases, there needs to be a frequent and most importantly reliable feeder bus service to each of these stations from outskirts of their towns. At the moment, the co-ordination of public transport between these cities and their suburbs is appaulling. Poor co-ordination in this respect can seriously damage the viability of these services as it says a lot about the people who run them.

Furthermore, it wouldn't be a bad idea extending a few more Waterford-Limerick services to Rossalre Europort thereby connecting the people of these towns directly (being the operative word) with ferrys to the UK and the Continent. Hence, if I were going to Clonmel, I would only have to change once(if i were getting the 8:00 "Intercity" from Dalkey to Rosslare Europrt) or twice (if I were changing in Bray). As well as this Rosslare would have another option of rail travel to Dublin (albiet a tad more indirect) via Waterford or Limerick Juntion. Therefore, the benefits would be three fold.