Mr. Conor Faughnan:

AA Ireland has grown from being Ireland’s premier motoring organisation into one of its leading consumer service businesses. It provides emergency rescue services for people in the home and on the road, as well as insurance for more than 200,000 customers. It specialises in home, motor and travel insurance and attends in the region of 130,000 car breakdowns every year, 80% of which are fixed on the spot. It is also a campaigning organisation. From its heritage of representing motorists to its 21st century role, the AA researches and champions consumer needs. It employs 550 people across Ireland in its growing team. It has its headquarters in central Dublin where it has approximately 400 staff. It has been in the broader College Green area since its foundation more than 100 years ago.

The College Green traffic management issue has received a great deal of attention recently because of the opening of the Luas cross-city line in December. The arrival of Luas trams into the mix has revealed how unsustainable the arrangement is, but the traffic problems on College Green date back further than that. In June 2009 a rush hour ban on private cars using College Green was introduced. Almost a decade later we are still talking about traffic chaos at that location. The AA has made the point previously that it frustrates motorists when they find themselves being blamed by default for every planning and transport error, as if the sole cause of the city's problems was selfish motorists who are too snobby to use public transport. All of the evidence we have demonstrates that the opposite is the case. Given good public transport services, no motorist has to be forced to use them and no driver chooses Dublin traffic jams if he or she can avoid it. The "selfish lazy motorist" is a fiction; a pantomime villain that Dublin City Council and others choose to blame instead of addressing their own failings. The traffic problems on College Green deprive the council of that excuse. Cars have been gone for almost a decade, but the traffic jams are worse than ever. Bizarrely, the choice now seems to be to blame taxis, which does not make sense. There is no room for both buses and trams on College Green at current and future Luas frequencies. As the tram tracks are not going to be moved, the buses will have to. This needs to be done now or we will be complaining about delays for years to come. Provision of the College Green plaza will certainly require buses to be removed. This could have been foreseen and perhaps there are some justified criticisms in that regard, but that is not important; what is more important is getting it right for the future. Most citizens support the concept of the College Green plaza and when it happens, a change in the traffic arrangements will be required.

The primary users of the existing space are the five main transport modes: the Luas, Dublin Bus, taxi drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. The latter two are modes of transport we should encourage. In particular, cyclists have reported College Green as being problematic. In recent months taxi drivers have seen themselves being pushed into the firing line. A ban on the use of taxis in the area is being heralded as the solution, but we need to face reality.

Taxis are public transport and are very important, especially for tourists and business visitors to the city. In any case, we do not believe the impact of taxis at that location is the primary cause of the problem.I repeat that we cannot accommodate buses and trams across the pinch point at Trinity College. The trams cannot move so the buses will have to move, even if Dublin Bus does not like it. Pushing the taxis out will make little or no difference. They will have to leave anyway when the pedestrianised plaza is introduced so they may as well get used to that idea now.

The AA has often spoken in praise of Dublin Bus and I will do so again on the record at this forum. It is the mainstay of our public transport system and the city would be lost without it. Dublin Bus is arguably under-respected and it is certainly under-funded. It deserves greater support. Even so, Dublin Bus must accept the reality that buses cannot stay on College Green. As it stands, too many routes pass through College Green and there is no good reason for that. Not everyone needs to get off a bus at Trinity College.

AA Roadwatch obviously observes traffic every day. One can see queues of buses waiting to access College Street during peak rush hour, from 8:20am to 9:20am. It is not uncommon to see literally dozens of buses stuck in the queue with nowhere to go. College Street is also very vulnerable. It would not take much to block that location, causing tremendous delays to the buses and to the Luas. From wherever our fascination with as many bus routes as possible serving College Green came, we now need to move beyond it. We also need to think beyond the day-to-day commuter. We know we need to make public transport journey times better, especially for commuters. Important as that is, however, it is not the only measure of success in a city and participants in the debate, including Dublin City Council, often seem to forget this. Too often the measure of success seems to be how many cars were forced out rather than how much business is brought in. Dublin needs to succeed not only for its commuters. Tourists are mentioned a lot but it is local people and local businesses who deserve more support. Dublin city’s traders feel they have been ignored in this debate and I have some sympathy for them in that regard. Measures designed to make Dublin hostile to cars have been given disproportionate time and attention while measures to support Dublin’s businesses do not get anything like the same amount of air time. Retail customer footfall has not recovered in the city’s shopping streets since the financial crisis. It has fully recovered in places like Dundrum, Blanchardstown and Liffey Valley but not in the city centre. Grafton Street looks greatly diminished and is quite a distance from the prestige retail street it once was. When we are thinking about the commercial heart of our city, we need to think not only about transport - important as that is - but also about business and general commerce in the city centre. It would be of poor comfort to us all if we completely solved Dublin's traffic problems but in so doing we killed the commercial life at the heart of the city.

College Green is not the only traffic black spot in Dublin. We need to take a more holistic view of transport in the city. We had major delays on the M50 again this morning, which is almost an everyday occurrence. We need to thoroughly review how we are managing transport and demand in Dublin city. In so doing, however, we must not take as our only measure of success how well we manage to make buses and Luas trams move. We must also remember why we want them to move and think about the commercial heart of the city.