Government Ministers made the decision to reverse the 20% fare decrease in 2025, FOI documents show.Opposition parties and campaigners are challenging a Government decision to start to reverse the last governments 20% public transport fare decrease and, in some cases, increase fares by as much as 35%.Transport campaigners are urging members of the public to contact their TDs ahead of a vote on the issue, which the Social Democrats are bringing forward in the Dil tomorrow, Wednesday, November 11th.The Dublin Commuter Collision, one of a number of Collision groups around the country which campaign for sustainable transport, said: The Social Democrats Motion to Stop the Fare Hikes will be debated in Dil ireann tomorrow. Please email your local TDs and ask them to support this Motion to #StoptheFareHikesThe coalition group across Ireland, who have been campaigning on this jointly with other groups under the Stop the Fare Hikes, are asking voters to contact their TDs again ahead of tomorrows vote.Although this website clearly reported that it was the Governments decision to reverse the 20% fare decrease, elsewhere it was portrayed as a bureaucratic decision removed from the Government. A Freedom of Information request by Cllr Chris Pender, a Social Democrats councillor in Kildare, makes it clear that it was a Government decision made by Ministers.The Journal reported last week that FOI documents released to them show that Minister for Transport DarraghOBrien told the National Transport Authority (NTA) not to announce the rise in public transport fares in September, despite him having signed off on the increases in July. But Cllr Penders FOI documents show that Government Ministers made the decision much earlier, in October 2025. The fare increase was even originally supposed to be implemented by now, and when it was not, in the civil service, Minister Jack Chambers Department of Public Expenditure led the charge on questioning why that did not happen. In a Substack post about the FOI request, Cllr Pender wrote: On 21 April 2026, an official in Public Expenditure wrote to the Department of Transport because, in their view, the fare plan was not being implemented as agreed.The email from an official in the Department of Public Expenditure to the Department of Transport said: From our point of view what has been set out below and at our most recent meeting is not consistent with what was agreed at the conclusion of the Estimates process. The decision to increase fares was agreed between our Ministers on 3 October [2025] and we were assured by your Department at that meeting that an implementation date of 1 June 2026 would allow for the necessary preparations to be made.There seems to have been a significant delay in communicating the to the NTA. which has left us in a situation, regardless of the ongoing geopolitical situation, whereby they would not have been ready to implement the increase on the agreed date, the Public Expenditure official said.The Public Expenditure official added: Secondly, it is not clear to us why the Department/NITA are now apparently operating on the basis of a 10% increase. Again, this is not consistent with what was agreed. There is no formal agreement or instruction of which we are aware to divert from what was agreed between our respective Ministers.