Ms Anne Graham:

We do not disagree with the Deputy. All I am saying is that in order to ensure that it is attractive for drivers to get out of their cars and use the public transport system, we must ensure that the journey time is reasonable and is actually shorter than that relating to a journey by car. At the moment, given the level of priority for buses as they come into the city via the national roads system and as they pass through the city centre, we cannot guarantee that those journey times are short enough to attract and encourage people. There is also the core bus corridors project, which is part of BusConnects. Those corridors will be in place once we get through the planning process.

They will certainly accommodate much shorter journey times. I refer also to the work we are doing with Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, to look at hard-shoulder running for buses and to ensure that we can get bus journey times down as much as possible.