The junior minister for road safety said he hopes the increased fares will go towards fixing those problems.<\/p>\n
Canney rejected criticism that the fares are unfair, given they happened only days after the D\u00e1il returned early to approve an extended reduction of 30c per litre for diesel and 25c for petrol until 31 October.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you people will say that there is a conflict of giving people incentives to use their cars by reducing custom excise,\u201d the Galway East TD said.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBut there\u2019s a lot of people in this country who still have no alternative but to use their cars. I\u2019m in a rural area and I know that people have to get their cars and go to work. They need some support too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Asked whether the public transport fare hikes may mean that those who use public transport most often \u2013 such as those who commute for work \u2013 may face the biggest financial loss, Canney said it\u2019s not only public transport users who are under pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody is hard-pressed at the moment, with the cost of living. A lot of what\u2019s happening in terms of cost of living is happening as a result of geopolitical issues way outside the control of this government.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Independent added that getting people to pay more will allow the government to \u201cextend\u201d current services.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy objective is to get every person who uses public transport a very good experience so they will continue to use it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The fare increase follows a review by the National Transport Authority. It is the first increase since 2019.<\/p>\n
Canney is in Killarney as a guest of this weekend\u2019s IRHA conference.<\/p>\n
The road haulage lobby is seeking the retention of fuel subsidies beyond October, as well as measures covering biofuels, and the further postponement of carbon tax increases.<\/p>\n
The IRHA\u2019s \u2018biofuel rebate scheme\u2019 and a further proposal to establish a dedicated 100% hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) rebate are ways to encourage drivers to move away from fossil fuels, the haulage body said.<\/p>\n
The minister said he did not want to preempt the budget negotiations, adding that he wants to work with the IRHA on the issues the group is raising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JUNIOR TRANSPORT MINISTER Se\u00e1n Canney has dismissed criticism of the government\u2019s public transport fare hikes, coming amid new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,285002,284902,6,19,17,115062,175758,11,12,15,16,5,13421,5285,7,8],"class_list":["post-674427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-haulage-conference","tag-hauliers-conference","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irha","tag-irish-road-haulage-association","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-public-transport","tag-sean-canney","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117220477676634051","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}