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

I will start with that last point. The Deputy is absolutely right to focus on it. The Dáil debate this afternoon was very useful. There are so many different aspects to it. One of the aspects that is most important is the role of public transport workers. They had an incredibly difficult experience. A number of drivers were pulled out of the cabs in their buses and intimidated and threatened. That is totally unacceptable. The public service they provide is so important. The idea that we would burn our own buses is terribly self-defeating for all of us. Dublin Bus took the right decisions at the right times. There were difficult decisions as to when to withdraw the services. The drivers went as late and as long as they could to try to get people home and out of the city in difficult circumstances. They also had to get buses back to depots and that is often complicated. We have depots in the city centre close to where some of the incidents were taking place. That was quite a challenging operation. Dublin Bus did an excellent job and it was the same with Transdev and the Luas operators. We will be able to replace the three buses. I went down to see the Luas the following morning. It looks like the middle carriage will not be reparable so we will have to replace that but that will not affect service.

The Deputy made a point about looking for better service in public transport. I absolutely agree with him on that. He makes a strong and valid case. Take the Sligo line as an example. There have been enhancements on a number of services recently with later services to Cork and Galway and other services. We need to look at the Sligo line and see how we can do something similar because there is a very strong and popular demand for it. When we provide more frequency, the Irish transport public responds. The good news story is that our public transport numbers are way up and comparative to neighbouring countries we are significantly ahead of any others that are similar. We need to double down on that.

There was significant investment this year, particularly on the heavy rail network. Something like €500 million was spent on the main safety and maintenance, overhauling the capital investment in it. That is an important first step. You have to make it safe. We now need to go beyond that and invest in new rail and new bus infrastructure.

It is frustrating that it has taken us longer. A lot of the projects are being delayed in planning. I will be upfront and honest about the real difficulties in getting a range of different projects through a planning system that, for a variety of reasons that are well recorded elsewhere, has gone through a very difficult period in the last two years. We are finally coming out of that now and we expect to see a continuing reduction in the length of time it is taking to get planning decisions from An Bord Pleanála in particular. That will help us.

I mentioned the roll-out of those ICR carriages and some of them have been slightly late but they are here now. They are being prepared for service. They will go into service at the end of next year or middle of next year. What that will do is enable us to cascade carriages so we can use existing stock but deploy them in new services. We have a budget for that and that will make a significant difference particularly on the rail commuting site, including the Sligo line.