There are 178 buses, mostly in the Ulsterbus fleet, which are a staggering 18 years or older

Liz Fawcett

The group's regional representative, Liz Fawcett, said it is furious that the promise had been dropped.

"It's an enormous irony that the executive is providing free travel to pensioners and yet won't spend the money to improve the bus fleet it's expecting them to use," she said.

"In England, the government's promised to get the average age of buses down to eight years.

"Here, the average age of the Ulsterbus large bus fleet is almost 13 years."

She added: "There are 178 buses, mostly in the Ulsterbus fleet, which are a staggering 18 years or older.

"It was those that the executive originally said it was going to replace. If a mere 25 buses a year are replaced, the fleet is actually going to get older."

'Transport poverty'

In its presentation, the committee said it would highlight the problem of transport poverty in the rural areas served by Ulsterbus, which runs Northern Ireland's province-wide service.

"We estimate that almost 40% of households in rural areas suffer from transport poverty," Dr Fawcett said.

"They either don't own a car or find running one a heavy financial burden.

"What concerns us is that more funding is going into roads than public transport in Northern Ireland which is of little use to this large proportion of the rural population.

"The executive needs to start matching its fine words on public transport with action - by devoting a higher percentage of its transport and infrastructure budgets to bus and rail."