Mr. Gareth Quinn:

I live near Ongar in Blanchardstown so I know it well and I was the area manager there. As Mr. Hann said, the decision is not taken lightly. Some 24 buses go out on the 39A in the morning and go up and down all day. If one goes out of sequence, a gap is created. Somewhere along the line, you have to get it back on sequence, no matter what. Everybody else after that then benefits from it all the way through. It is a 24-hour service, so that bus could be out for the next 21 hours. You need to get it back on track. One could say that we could move up a bus or whatever but you have to get them so they are operating within service.

Second, as the Deputy knows, the 39 is a half-hour service during the day whereas the other service is ten or five minutes or whatever. If something happens to a plain 39, because it is a half-hour service, if you do not cover that departure, you are leaving an hour's gap for people down Shelerin Road or Clonsilla Road. Therefore, you might take a 39A and move it across purely for the customer benefit. It is not done lightly. We want all buses to operate as per timetable and departure. However, someone somewhere has to make a decision. It is not about leaving people on the side of the road; it is for the betterment of the vast majority of people.