Dominic Hannigan's blog

The lack of an integrated bus service between Newgrange and Drogheda bus station was brought to my attention at the beginning of the week. Although the Interpretive Centre is open until 17:45 in Winter and 18:45 in Summer, the bus to town leaves before this. The result is that staff and tourists are often stranded at the centre, and have to hitch back or call a taxi.

I thought that it would be a useful idea to highlight this issue and managed to get the story covered by the Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Mirror, Star and Mail. It was also the main story in "The Irishman's Diary" the following day. As a result, it appears that Bus Eireann and going to sit down and review the bus service to the centre. Things may hopefully improve!

I got a lot of phone calls and texts about the RTE programme on Tuesday night, "The Naked Election", which followed candidates around during the recent election. The programme had a clip of me just as I heard the result. I haven't seen the programme yet (I was in Kilkenny) but seemingly I looked as sick as a dog (which is probably how I felt!).

I was delighted to be appointed Labour Party Spokesperson on Commuter Issues. The role covers transport, environment, planning, education and health issues in the new peri-urban communities in counties like Meath, Wicklow, Kildare and down the country in Cork, Galway and Limerick. My responsibility will be to highlight issues of government policy that affect people living in these communities, and to suggest where changes and inmprovements could be made to current legislation to improve the quality of life in these areas. I'm looking forward to the job!