John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome all the attendees. I appreciate them giving their time here and the contributions they have made. There is no action without an equal and opposite reaction is a dictum that can be applied to this issue, but we have to live with it. We have to be practical in terms of what has happened. In many ways, in terms of what has been happening in recent months and also the witnesses' presentations today, for Dublin Bus and the taxi drivers it is a little bit like a variation of the prodigal son. Taxis and Dublin Bus, and I thank them on behalf of Dubliners for keeping the city moving, particularly in the midst of all the Luas cross city construction, have been the loyal, hard-working labourers serving in the vineyard for the past 40 years. Luas is the new kid on the block. It has a big advantage. It has rails in the ground and it is not going anywhere, and that is reflected in the contributions. I warmly welcome Luas and Luas cross city. Luas cross city is the only immovable force; it is the only immovable object. We have to accept that everybody else will have to be flexible because Luas is not going anywhere. Ultimately, despite all the criticisms that have been made of it, any new transport initiative will have to be given a period of time to bed in. I believe everybody accepts that, but I have questions for Transdev Ireland. It is solving some of the problems with real time and so on, so I will give it the benefit of the doubt on that. Passenger safety is a real concern, as is overcrowding. The witnesses might address that briefly.

I do not know, but I accept Mr. Owen Keegan's bona fides as chief executive officer of Dublin City Council on this issue. It is an elected body that has decided to pedestrianise a plaza that is part of the centre traffic spine of the city. I accept that is what it intends to do, and I believe we have to bite the bullet on that. We cannot have a lot of public transport moving through that space if it is to be a pedestrian plaza. I am sorry for the clichés, but we cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. I am assuming there are things that can be done, and that need to be done, to alleviate the situation for taxi drivers in the context of that. One of those is that taxis, which are an essential part of public transport, ought to have access to some of the bus corridors to which they do not currently have access. I have noticed that in terms of some of the routes taxi drivers have to take around the core of the city, the amount they add to a fare is considerable. For example, their inability to access the bus corridor on St. Stephen's Green does not make much sense to me. There are a number of things that need to be done regarding public transport.

For Dublin Bus, the witnesses are all disparate voices here. When did they all last meet together as a group to discuss this issue, or did they meet? Has the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport called them and all the other stakeholders in to discuss it and to hear their individual views, not just on the plaza issue but the Luas cross city issue? Where are the representatives of the Garda traffic corps, which has an essential role to play in this, particularly in the bedding in of the Luas?

The central spine of Dublin Bus has been taken away. As Deputy Catherine Murphy said, Dublin Bus is serving the people who are not served by Luas, DART or trains whose landing points and terminal points when they come into the city are getting further away from where they used to be able to locate and get off. There are certain issues on which we have to make decisions. Luas cross city is here. It is immovable, so everything else will have to work around it in terms of transport solutions. The longer trams are longer because they have bigger capacity. It is too late now, but what particular consideration was given to the fact that O'Connell Bridge is 45 m long and the trams are 55 m long?

The tram will always have its way but, as far as I understand, at peak time the tram will cross the bridge every three minutes. It takes 50 seconds to 90 seconds to cross the bridge and it must clear it, which leaves a minute and a half for taxis, bikes, commercial vehicles, buses and everyone else coming up and down the quays. The city manager must provide us with some kind of insight into this. If 300 buses are taken out of College Green every hour, 3,000 every day, where will they go? We do not want this patchwork quilt of responses. This is not directed at the chief executive. He is only part of the strategy, and I accept that. It may take a little time - for example, six months - to come up with an overall master plan. A point I made yesterday is that the transport map of Dublin is being rewritten and redrawn before our eyes and this cannot be done in a patchwork way; it must be done in a comprehensive way. The witnesses may have to take some time to do this in order that they and all other stakeholders come together, except Luas because it is immovable and everything now must work around it. Luas is in a very happy position and it is justified because of its passenger-carrying capacity, but Dublin Bus's passenger-carrying capacity is significantly in excess of that of Luas.

My big bugbear is that there is no one person accountable, elected or appointed who can pull all these voices together in one room. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport can, but there is no Dublin authority that can pull together every single one of the witnesses' organisations as stakeholders in this debate. They will have to be pulled together regularly over the next year or so in order to thrash this out, sort it out and come up with a solution. This is not London. We do not have an underground. I hugely, wholeheartedly welcome Luas cross-city but I am thinking of the emasculation of taxis and Dublin Bus from the spine of the city. Anyone could have seen that this was coming. Again, this is not aimed at Mr. Keegan. He is just part of the tapestry of solutions. The National Transport Authority is not represented here today even though it is the responsible body. I think Dublin Bus is getting the brunt of all this and sucking up an awful lot in this process. In fairness to Dublin Bus, it is adapting, but someone must pull all this together. Dublin Bus cannot be penalised regarding all the big gaps of the population of Dublin that are not served by rail of whatever variety. Dublin City Council is just in charge of the city, and this is impacting the suburbs and the other four Dublin local authority areas. No one has a big plan. No one even has a big plan as to how to devise a big plan. Dubliners and Dublin commuters deserve much better than this. We need someone to pull ideas together and come up with a vision that everyone can buy into.

I have a question directed at Transdev. It concerns serious overcrowding and security. Does Mr. Lunden-Welden agree with the notion of public transport police, particularly regarding the city centre, because the kind of passenger-carrying capacity Transdev has? I have one final question on behalf of all the shift workers who either come into the city to work or live in the city and go out into the suburbs to work. They rely after a particular time exclusively either on their own cars or on taxis to get themselves to work. Does Transdev have any plans regarding Luas cross-city to expand the hours to serve an increasingly mobile population?