Coming to the end of the road?

Swilly Bus Service has been keeping Donegal communities in touch for 70 years. But now it says it will have to cut routes unless they are subsidised. Mary Phelan reports

'I've never come across a bus service like it. Everyone knows each other, everybody chats and the drivers are on first-name terms with most of the passengers, know where they get on and off. One old man is always up for a song; sweets are regularly passed round. One of the drivers sometimes plays his saxophone while he is waiting. It's like a party."

Annie Trupp knows what she is talking about. A lone parent of three children, she doesn't drive and lives in a remote part of northwest Co Donegal. To get to Letterkenny, 30 miles away and the nearest place for shopping in larger retail chains, she depends on the Swilly Bus Service.

One of Europe's oldest and quaintest bus companies, it plies the bumpy roads of the extreme northwest though picture-postcard scenery, linking the small towns and villages from Dungloe onwards with Letterkenny and Derry. The sight of a Swilly bus, with its green and gold finish, against the backdrop of rugged Mount Errigal is reminiscent of John Hinde postcards at their most technicolour.

The service, for which passengers pay between €2 and €11 a journey, is vital to the community in this remote region. It is used especially by older people to do the shopping, collect the pension and pick up a prescription. It is also a vital focus for social interaction in this wild and beautiful part of Ireland.

Founded in 1929 as part of Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway Company, it has served the community well: an estimated 1.5 million journeys were made on the service last year. Undaunted by the Troubles, it was a cross-border institution before the term was invented. Veteran driver Cathal Murray recalls being caught in crossfire several times while driving into Derry via the Brandywell. Today, however, the company's problems are economic rather than political, and many of its routes' days seem numbered.

Some of its loss-making services are due to be axed at the end of the month. Inevitably those under threat are the ones serving the most isolated areas: places where their loss will have the greatest impact. The twice-daily service from Dungloe, linking villages in the Rosses and the isolated hamlets along the magnificent Bloody Foreland with Falcarragh, will cease. On the Fanad peninsula Rathmullen will no longer have a service. In Inishowen routes are being rationalised, with the service to Malin and Shrove discontinued.

It's all about money, of course. The privately owned company claims it cannot continue losing cash. Only two of its routes make a profit, it says. Pointing out that it provides a scheduled service to half of the second largest county in Ireland, it wants the Government to subsidise the loss- making routes. It does receive a fixed monthly amount from the Government for carrying people with free-travel passes.

Séamus Brennan, like so many transport ministers before him, insists he cannot subsidise a private company. The Swilly Bus Service argues that it provides public transport. "We do in Donegal what Bus Éireann does in other places," says Connell Diver, its secretary and a third-generation employee.

Matters seem to have reached an impasse. Redundancy offers have been made to seven of the company's drivers, according to Diver. Serious as this is for them, the social and economic implications of the loss of the service for the community at large are nothing short of disastrous.

The extreme northwest has been very badly hit by unemployment in the past two years. The Údarás na Gaeltachta industrial estate in Gweedore, which has boasted well-paid industrial jobs even when they were scarce elsewhere, now employs fewer than 600 people, compared with more than 1,200 at its peak. Only last week yet another factory announced it was closing, with the loss of a further 48 jobs.

Yet the threat to the bus service has aroused little outcry in the communities affected. Cathal Murray, the saxophone-playing driver, who has worked for the company for 37 years, says he is amazed that traders and local politicians have not been more vocal.

"This service keeps the local economy going," he says "and I cannot understand why shopkeepers in the likes of Dungloe, Falcarragh and Gweedore haven't been up in arms. It really is going to hit elderly people very hard, as this service is so important to their independence. No other company is going to give a service like we give, and people will have to take taxis. That'll be expensive. But they will also miss the crack on the bus. Taking the bus is a point of contact for so many people."

Pensioners are not the only ones who will be affected. Sally Boyce is a mother of five from Falcarragh who does not drive. "I'd be lost without the Lough Swilly," she says, using locals' affectionate term for the service. "I use it for shopping in Letterkenny, but I also use it to visit my mother, who lives a few miles away. I have always used it for hospital visits, as it goes right past Letterkenny General. The receptionists at the hospital know the service and always facilitate people from this area by giving them appointments that suit the schedule. In fact one of my children was nearly born on the bus."

Tourists, particularly backpackers, use the service a lot, as do students commuting to Letterkenny Institute of Technology. One recent Tuesday morning Monika Bauer from Germany was delighted to be able to leave her heavy rucksack on the bus and enjoy a cup of coffee while waiting for the midday service along the coast. Having spent the previous day at Malin Head, she was en route to Bunbeg, where she planned to take the ferry to Tory Island.

"It's a really old-fashioned bus service," she says, "like something you would read about in an Enid Blyton storybook. We don't have bus services like this in Germany any more. I really like it. The landscape is spectacular, and the people are very friendly."

Adrian Mac Fhearraigh of Meas, an environment group in Gortahork, says the end of the routes will be a serious blow. "The Lough Swilly bus service is an absolutely crucial part of the local infrastructure. We hear so much about rural regeneration and the importance of maintaining the viability of isolated areas like this, yet nobody seems to care about this issue. Everyone uses the Lough Swilly bus. My mother couldn't have brought us up without it. If it goes it will be devastating."

Although some private coach services link parts of the routes currently covered by the Swilly Bus Service to Dublin, Galway and Belfast, these operate only at certain times of the day. And they miss out swathes of the area.

This week Séamus Brennan said Bus Éireann was talking to the company. "The discussions are expected to assist in developing appropriate arrangements for the continuation of public-transport services in the areas affected."

James McDaid, Brennan's deputy and a TD for Donegal North-East, accepts the Swilly Bus Service cannot continue to operate at a loss. He also accepts that Bus Éireann has a public-service obligation. He says that "only a small number of people" will be affected by the threatened route closures, however, and emphasises that Bus Éireann "can only take on a service that will at least break even".

For those depending on the Swilly Bus Service, the June 30th deadline looms ominously.