The increase in public transport fares confirmed this week is a “Trumpian policy” that will “cost lives”, a protest in Dublin heard on Friday.
About 100 people attended the demonstration outside Government Buildings, organised by the Green Party, after it was confirmed that adult fares on public transport are to increase by an average of 15 per cent from January.
“The Government – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – they made a political choice,” Green Party leader and TD Roderic O’Gorman told the crowd.
“They decided that in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, a crisis that is recognised by everybody, they decided that workers, that students, that people who use the bus and the train, that they can afford to pay more.”
O’Gorman accused some members of the Government of not using or valuing public transport.
“Ultimately, if you don’t use the service, you don’t value it. And the people who are making a decision about how we fund our buses and our trains, they don’t step foot on the Dart, they don’t step foot on the Dublin Bus service.”
Noting that the National Transport Authority (NTA) is “being hauled in before the Oireachtas transport committee” later this month over the decision, O’Gorman said: “This is not the fault of the NTA. This is a decision by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.”
Orlagh Gaynor, of Irish Doctors for the Environment, said the decision to increase fares would “cost lives”.
“Make no mistake: this decision to raise fares is an attack on public health and wellbeing.”
Gaynor said thousands of people die every year from air pollution, noise pollution, stress and sedentary lifestyles – a situation that will worsen if more people opt to use cars over public transport.
“It is our patients who need public transport to attend our hospitals, to attend appointments. Our doctors, our healthcare workers, need to get to work. People need to be with their loved ones. This is an attack on public health, social justice and equity,” Gaynor said.
“It makes no sense economically or environmentally to continue to subsidise fossil fuels and raise public transport fares.”
Representatives from the Labour Party, People Before Profit and the Social Democrats also addressed the protest.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik said “huge progress” was made on public transport investment and cycling infrastructure when the Green Party was previously in government. However, she said much of this work was “now being reversed”.
“What we’re seeing instead is a Trumpian perspective, a Trumpian policy – roads baby, roads – and it’s not good enough. And we have to resist it.”
Daniel Walsh, president of Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn, the national representative body for third-level students, described the fare increase as “another kick in the teeth” for students who have in recent years faced a rise in college fees and accommodation costs.
“Students are being doubly penalised by Government failures,” Walsh said.
“The same students who are being forced to commute two, three, four, five hours a day because of the Government’s failure to invest in the purpose-built student accommodation are now being told that come January they’re going to be hit into the pockets and made to pay more for their commute to college.”
Michael Kennedy, from Drogheda, Co Louth, was one of the many students at the protest. He travels to Dublin for university and said the fare increase would have a big impact on him and others.
“It’s an attack on working class people and those of us who can’t afford a car, those of us who can’t afford to drive, can’t afford lessons … this is just another expense being slapped on people.”