While there are a number of individual Government actions underway to address aspects of rural transport issues

The Rural Transport Initiative (RTI) - provides funding for pilot community-led rural transport projects
Expenditure on transport infrastructure under the NDP, which includes country roads
Changes in the regulatory environment, including recent deregulation of taxis and current debate on liberalisation of scheduled bus services
The emerging National Spatial Strategy examining inter alia, wider settlement and transport issues.

Rural Transport as yet lacks a fully integrated overall national approach.

In order to develop a more integrated national policy on rural transport, detailed information is required on the precise nature and scale of the underlying rural transport problem - who is most affected & how, how many people are involved, where do they live, what might be needed to help them. To initiate the gathering of this essential information on a nation-wide basis, an Interdepartmental Working Group on Rural Transport was set up in November 2000 and chaired by the Department of the Environment & Local Government. County Development Boards's (CDBs) were recognised as the mechanism through which this information could be obtained at local county level and each County Development Board agreed to undertake a Rural Transport Audit and Needs Assessment.

The findings of these studies are to be used for two main purposes:

At a national level they will feed into the development of national strategies to be co-ordinated by the Interdepartmental Working Group and
At a local level to be incorporated into the CDB's 10 year Strategy on Economic, Social & Cultural Development for the respective counties.

Here in Kilkenny the County Development Board engaged 'WSP Transportation Consultants' to carry out the study. The study took three key steps

Audit of existing transport services operating in the county.
Postal questionnaire survey of a sample of 2000 people from the rural areas.
A facilitated workshop attended by a cross section of interested parties relating to rural transport.

Enclosed is the report resulting from the study.