Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

With regard to electric buses, as Deputy Smith stated, the 165 electric buses are going to go into operation in a very public and visible way. They are very much city orientated. To date, electric buses are not working on the long distance Bus Éireann routes. That is one of the reasons we put three trial hydrogen buses on the longer distance routes. To date, the battery electric buses are more suited to shorter distances. A total of 165 electric buses are being contracted. That is the big investment in public transport this year. I refer in particular to the purchase of new battery electric trains, the intercity railcar, ICR, the rail carriages and the electric buses for rural and regional services. We will have a significant increase in capacity. We need it to coincide with BusConnects, which will require greater frequency and new services. Bus Éireann, Dublin Bus and the National Transport Authority, NTA, are going to have to be clever because the patterns of demand may be changing post Covid, so there will be a fair bit of flexibility as to where they go. The more those buses and those rail carriages go in, the more we can increase the capacity on the overall systems. That is what they are designed to do.