Mr. Ray Coyne:

Deputy Eamon Ryan asked a question on area. If we consider route buses travel in the city, and Deputy Ryan mentioned a wide area of Dublin city from which people travel into the city.

People travelling from Blanchardstown in the city benefit from the College Green bus gate. Many people do not use it but the consistency of the bus journey time benefits them as they are travelling in from further out of the city. The consistency of the journey time and the fact that it is not variable also makes our services more frequent. We used to have 40-minute spikes but the College Green bus gate wiped much of that out in its early phases. If we were to remove the College Green bus gate, the next location, as essentially it involves crossing the Liffey, would be Parliament Street, which is the next bridge. I would not consider Parliament Street having regard to how it operates today. From a planning point of view, there is traffic on Parliament Street, there is a bridge and this turn and that turn but we would need to examine it to ascertain what would be possible in that context. In its current state it is not a suitable alternative because one cannot turn left off the quays on to Parliament Street. Buses go through College Green to go up George's Street, but if the route was down the quays, I believe the next left-hand turn would be down at Church Street and how would buses get back to go up George's Street? As we view it, Parliament Street is one side while the other side is essentially Westland Row at the back of Trinity College. Those are the two edges of it but many people are travelling north of that and consequently, one must try to get the buses back there. If we were to send people down to Bridge Street and then send them back into town, that would not be suitable. There is the issue of our customers' experience but there is also the matter of a responsibility for the economy of the city. We need to attract customers on to buses and to bring them into the city centre for work, retail purposes and social and cultural life. If we were to make the restrictions so stark that it turns people away, we would end up with increasingly fewer people using public transport. That would be a downward spiral. I would suggest Parliament Street is the next closest alternative and it would need significant adjustments in traffic movement within those areas.

I do not believe it is a zero-sum game. College Green is a multi-modal area at present and I am sure it will remain so after whatever decisions are made and it should remain so. I am not speaking only in the context of buses and the Luas. It is not the case that if there were zero-sum buses, the problem would be solved. We need to consider wider issues. We are not the only provider operating in that area along with the Luas. There are many vehicle movements in it and that needs to be taken into account in any future decisions. We have been consistent on that, particularly since 2016. We have advocated for a multi-modal approach. We know the city certainly is not about Dublin Bus but from my perspective, it is about having integrated public transport. That is what we need to work towards. It is complex. If there was an easy resolution, it probably would have been addressed 20 years ago but it is complex. A significant portion of the economy in Dublin city is at stake. Therefore, moving buses tomorrow from that area is not an option for the economy. Buses can move anywhere but in terms of maintaining public transport and contributing to the economy, buses are crucial and we need to consider that.

I thank Deputy Ryan for his kind comments, which are a great reflection on all our employees. I will make sure that is fed back to our employees. They do tremendous work in delivering our services bearing in mind we have had a significant increase in passenger numbers.

The BusConnects plan is an NTA programme of work funded by the Government. It comprises a suite of nine initiatives, some of which will be long term with regard to integrated ticketing, cashless ticketing, account based ticketing and fare simplification, which I mentioned earlier. We are progressing some of those issues as we proceed. Significant infrastructural improvements are required, including park-and-ride sites and significant interchange in areas. The NTA is working on that. Dublin Bus will feed in its expertise into that. We have a long history of expertise in managing, planning and implementing bus networks, which have brought ancillary benefits for our customers. We will feed our views to the NTA. One of the earliest indicators in this respect is that BusConnects provides for increased frequency and increased service levels. We have been adding buses to our routes during the last year. During the past three years, we have added north of 20% to services. BusConnects will be part of that. We have started to introduce the services. There is a network redesign in BusConnects and we did the largest one in Europe in 2011. We are feeding our information into the NTA. At present, it is in charge of this and is leading it. I understand there will be a consultation period, which will commence in the second quarter of this year. That will be a full redesign of the total bus network in Dublin.

We have significant experience of doing it successfully and we will feed that into the NTA. I believe the public consultation will take place in the second quarter. Initiatives are occurring in the background, but we will put a BusConnects brand on that at a later stage.