A midlands group is hoping that a Government-sponsored £3.5 million grant scheme will help it provide adequate rural public transport - but it has no intention of buying a single bus.
Indeed, the OAK Partnership, which is a rural development organisation and stands for Offaly and Kildare Partnership, has already initiated public transport services between east Offaly, Westmeath, Dublin and Kildare, without owning a single bus. The Minister for Public Enterprise, Mrs O'Rourke, has announced that grant aid of £3.5 million will be made available to communities to facilitate the development of rural public transport schemes. The Department has recently issued a call for applications from interested groups for that aid.
"The last thing we would do is buy a bus," OAK Partnership spokesman Mr Pat Leogue said. Instead, the partnership has made use of existing buses in four counties, during the times of the day when such buses are not used, and arranging new routes and passengers for them.
"We thought from the beginning that it would be a mistake to buy a bus and then try to make it viable when there were so many private bus operators and Bus Eireann out there competing to make a living. What if we got the bus and a driver and paid all the overheads and it was sitting there for most of the day?"
Instead, the partnership looked at issues such as how people without transport managed to attend hospital appointments and how many community groups such as the disabled actually owned a bus.
Its research showed two important points. First, since 1995 the lack of public transport in north Offaly/west Kildare was the issue most consistently raised in community surveys, and second, employers and a wide range of service providers from local authorities to health boards were growing increasingly frustrated by the problem.
"We are between two health boards, the Midland and the Eastern, here, and that meant that if a person from each board had to get to Dublin for a medical appointment then two taxis were called, one by each board. And they waited while the patients were in hospital."
The partnership decided to contact all the owners of buses and began to knit together those who needed a bus with those groups who owned one. Once up and running, employers in the east Kildare area approached the partnership for help in getting a service running from outlying areas.
As well as matchmaking between the private bus operators, the employers and those who needed a service, the partnership has begun to get assistance from the local authorities and the health boards in that they now schedule appointments around the availability of transport.
Members of Kildare Leader Company, Offaly and Meath county councils, the health boards, local development groups, private bus and hackney operators, community information centres and active retirement groups now sit on the partnership's transport working group. Recently, a new transport schedule was brought out which details Bus Eireann services between Edenderry, Clane and Busaras as its spine, but which also includes feeders and cross-routes between Naas, Sallins and Clane, as well as services from Edenderry to the hospitals at Mullingar, Tullamore and Dublin.