Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the representatives from the various transport providers and the NTA. The last time they appeared before the committee, we had just come out of the Covid pandemic. I convey our thanks to all their front-line staff for the work they did during the pandemic providing essential services. What some of those front-line workers were exposed to last Thursday night in Dublin city was totally unacceptable. I hope they are all okay. I know people can be shaken by such an experience. They continued until as late as they possibly could and made every effort to get as many people out of the city as possible. I again pass on my thanks for that.

Prior to having this job, I worked in a public transport service provider, which gave me an opportunity to work predominantly across rail but also in some bus services. My experience of people who work in transport provision is that nobody wants to delay a passenger. Everybody is absolutely committed to services running on time and to providing a good service to the public. That is my experience of transport workers across the country predominantly. I do not think anybody in any layer of our transport agencies wants to do anything but provide a good service. Part of the problem we have is that we have a massive demand for public transport. We can see this when we put on new services, such as the Connecting Ireland and BusConnects services. There is a demand for the new rail services. We see ridership increasing out there. The number of people returning to public transport after the Covid pandemic is very positive.

For about 30 or 40 years we did not invest in our public transport services. We invested mostly in building new roads and creating car dependency. Part of the difficulty we now have is that there is massive expectation on behalf of the public for better transport services but we are trying to overcome 30 to 40 years of inertia and just steady-state investment. I realise the pressure that puts on service providers to try to crank up from a standing start to very high demand.

I have received loads of emails from constituents who are delighted with new services when they are put in place. I have had many emails from constituents very unhappy with services, mostly when the service does not turn up or is delayed and there is no communication on it, leaving children and other passengers at a bus stop. I recently had a meeting with the NTA at which we discussed a particular Go-Ahead service. I am glad to report that service is operating very well now. I have stayed in contact with the parents group whose children were left at bus stops and, thankfully, I no longer get messages from them. I take it that no messages is good news.

Bus Éireann operates the 133 route from Wicklow. It is a great service with massive demand. The only complaint I get is when a single-decker bus shows up at peak time and it is full by the time it gets to Kilpedder or Newtown. I understand the difficulty with recruitment. Of course, there is a difficulty with bus driver recruitment, but at the other end of it we have these vehicles that are in service for 20 or 21 hours a day which requires a proper maintenance regime with good mechanics and good systems to keep it reliable. I know nobody in Bus Éireann or the NTA intentionally sends out a single-decker bus at peak time on the 133 route. It happens almost out of desperation and is because the operator is down maintenance workers, affecting the reliability of the fleet. That is the reason these things happen. I know they want to provide good services.

Mr. Hann made a point about congestion. It is absolutely clear to me that because of the 30 to 40 years of focus on cars, car dominance, urban sprawl and people depending on cars to get around, trying to retrofit a bus service that meanders in and out of ever-sprawling estates suits nobody. It does not provide a service for anybody when trying to provide a service for everybody. That is the difficulty.

One of the difficulties I have is with public representatives saying they want better public transport, better buses, better reliability and more services. They claim to be all in favour of public transport but do not agree with the road space allocation. I think a number of public representatives speak out of both sides of their mouth on this. They will go to the people who want to remain in their cars. There are always people who will want to drive and people who have to drive. However, there is a growing population of people-----