Ms Anne Graham:

I will pick up on some of the other questions posed by Deputy Murphy. She asked, given that the bus is the workhorse of public transport, why buses do not get the same level of priority in the city centre compared with the Luas cross-city service. In the lead up to the launch of the Luas cross-city service we conducted some very careful planning with both Dublin Bus and the local authorities. We tried to ensure that all of the different modes of transport could operate through the city centre. We published traffic management plans around the city centre. A lot of improvements were made, particularly on the north quays, to improve the movement of buses through the city centre. When we were in operational mode, we had hoped that the College Green proposal would be in place at that stage, which would have changed the movements of buses around the area.

When it transpired that that would not be an option, we had to make a decision to remove some of the bus services at peak times in order to keep general traffic moving through that area. The bus can respond very quickly in terms of changing priority but we consider all services in the round and try to improve priority for bus and light rail at the same time.

The livery for the Go-Ahead services has been designed and those buses will come into operation later in the autumn. We wish to provide a single livery across the Dublin services but we are still working with Dublin Bus on the livery and how it might be presented in terms of the services it operates. We want it to be under a TFI bus livery such that customers are not confused about this State-provided bus service in Dublin.

The Chairman asked about staffing. We want and need more staff in order to deliver and we are working with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to see how we can deliver these ambitious programmes of works with our current staff and, it is hoped, an improved level of staffing resource. We are very conscious that we need to engage with An Bord Pleanála, which decides on many of our infrastructure projects, to alert it to the projects coming forward not only in terms of transport but also other major infrastructure developments such that it is resourced to manage this programme of works.