Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Bus Services in Counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow: Discussion

Mr. Billy Hann:

There you go. We deal with protests regularly also. Therefore, it was business as usual for us up until maybe teatime, at around 6.30 p.m. or 7 p.m. When the situation started to kick off and escalate, we made a decision to put a cordon 1 km around the city and stop our buses in the north and south from going into the middle of the city, where the riots were starting to become uncontrollable. Very quickly, within a half hour, they moved from being somewhat contained to being uncontained. Three buses were burnt out and a fourth, also burned, was badly damaged. Another four were badly damaged, with windows broken, bodywork damaged and wipers pulled off. The cost has not been fully quantified yet. We are working on that and will have to work with the insurance companies on it. However, in simple terms, a diesel bus, one of which was burned, costs around €350,000. Two hybrid buses, estimated to cost €570,000 each, were completely burned out. I do not want to give a figure but we are into a quite significant amount of money.

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