Mr. Stephen Hannan:

I would have loved to have had this conversation with the NTA but unfortunately it was not to be. Deputy Troy put it elegantly. This is madness that Dublin Bus livery is going to paint 90% of buses for the sake of 10%. Dublin Bus is painting Dublin Buses as we speak and it is a waste of money. This is all reliant on those bus lanes and corridors. I am a bus driver, Mr. O'Connor is a bus driver and we know that 90% of people ignore bus lanes. Roughly 10% of people in the city do not. What is it that suggests that because bus lanes and corridors are introduced, suddenly this plan is going to work?

In some cities this does work because closed circuit television, CCTV, on buses is used to monitor bus lanes and capture images of vans and buses using them. Those people are prosecuted. I brought this up, perhaps ten years ago, to see if we could get this introduced. It fell on deaf ears. That is the type of thinking needed and that is what bus drivers are telling these people.

I will address wheelchair use. This drives me mad. There are buses that cater for wheelchairs. If I have two people on a bus with prams, however, and I politely ask them to fold them to let a wheelchair user on, they will tell me "no". It happens every day. I cannot enforce that. It should be enforced somehow.

I will give an example from Dunboyne, which is heavily populated. The 70 bus operates from there. People have been told that they can get the 70 bus into town but they will have to get off in Blanchardstown and get another bus. I have been told that the NTA figures show this will be faster. Any bus driver or anyone with a bit of common sense will say that getting two buses into the city centre is slower than staying on one bus. As Mr. Murphy said earlier, we have many reservations on the BusConnects project but we need to get into discussions similar to this with the NTA. That is the only way this will be sorted out.