SIMON HARRIS, YOU’VE saved my ass again. 

Because there was no column last week, the opportunity to comment on Ireland’s increasing public transport fares almost slipped away from me. Then the Tánaiste decided to open his mouth, and manna fell right out of it. 

As the government gear up for this autumn’s budget, the Fine Gael leader came out to promise that this would be a budget for “those who get up early every morning and go to work”. 

Well, that’s comforting, since just days earlier the government announced that those who would be getting up early and going to work by bus, Dart or Luas would soon be paying an average of 15% more per journey for the privilege. 

Having spent what seems like my entire adult life standing underneath those stupid LED signs that lie to you about when the bus is going to come, only for the bus to never come at all, I cannot say that I’m pleased that the cost of this experience is going back up. When the flat fare was introduced, I believed that the direction of travel for public transport prices in Ireland was positive, which made a nice change, since usually the direction of travel associated with public buses in Dublin is no direction at all, since they never goddamn show up.

Honestly, the introduction of the €2 90-minute flat fare was probably the only thing that placated me enough to stop me using a pair of pliers to pull out my fingernails and send them to the Dublin Bus head office of like some kind of psycho. Many conversations about the various failures of this government have been softened by ‘Ah, well, at least public transport has got cheaper’. Now that it’s gone, there’s really no telling what I’ll do, and I can’t be the only freak out there who feels the same way. 

But this isn’t about me, and what is really galling is the one-two punch of rhetoric that suggests ordinary people are being prioritised, right after........

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