Mr. Peter Strachan:

I thank the Chair and members of the committee for the invitation to attend.

I will begin by giving some brief details on my background and career to date. I am a geography graduate of Durham University and a member of the Chartered Institution of Railway Operators. I have 40 years’ experience in transport in the UK and Australia and have run a number of train operating companies in the UK and bus, tram and rail operations in Melbourne. I was the inaugural CEO of TransLink transit authority, the public transport authority in Brisbane and south-east Queensland. I was also director general of major projects in London with the UK Department for Transport and led on transport delivery for the London 2012 Olympic Games. I currently serve on the boards of Merseyrail and Caledonian Sleeper for Serco plc., the boards of the UK Rail Delivery Group and Transport for London, and I am a non-executive board member for Transport for Wales Rail. I serve as chair of the North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust in England and chair of UK Road Offender Education, UKROEd, the national driver offender retraining scheme.

At this point I will briefly recall the background to the National Transport Authority's, NTA’s, establishment and its role. The principal rationale for the authority was the need for a new approach to the planning and implementation of public transport services and infrastructure in the greater Dublin area to be delivered through a single authority with powers to ensure joined-up thinking and delivery across all transport modes. This was then extended so that the authority became the national body for public transport and taxi regulation. While the legislation establishing the NTA is complex and lengthy, as I am sure members of the committee will acknowledge, section 10 of the Dublin Transport Authority Act 2008 sets down the high-level objectives the authority is required to achieve in succinct terms. They are neatly captured by the first objective in particular, which is “the development of an integrated transport system which contributes to environmental sustainability and social cohesion and promotes economic progress”.

The authority now receives approximately €1.6 billion in Government grants. Almost €1 billion is allocated to capital investment in sustainable transport infrastructure across all modes, ranging from major schemes such as BusConnects, DART+ and MetroLink to small active travel schemes. The remaining funding is allocated to the operation of subsidised bus and rail services by the CIÉ companies and other providers, as well as funding the administrative costs of the authority. The authority collects approximately €450 million in fare revenue, which is allocated to the operation of public transport services.

I will now move on now to some other aspects of the authority’s work. In 2023, the authority finalised a major plan for the greater Dublin area, which accounts for approximately 40% of the State’s population and economic activity. The Transport Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area 2022-2042, which was approved by the Minister for Transport, provides a comprehensive outline of what is required to meet the transport demand for the sustainable economic development of the greater Dublin area, taking into account the carbon emission reductions required in the transport sector. On a non-statutory basis and in partnership with the relevant local authorities, the NTA has developed transport strategies for the metropolitan areas of Galway, Cork, Limerick-Shannon and Waterford. The Galway strategy was completed in 2016 and is now in the process of being reviewed, with a public consultation planned for the first quarter of 2024. The NTA recognises the national planning framework is a key Government strategy that supports our transport strategies. It supports balanced regional development, compact growth and transit-oriented development.

The NTA acknowledges that the funding made available to the authority to invest in new and enhanced public transport infrastructure has grown substantially in recent years. These funds support the authority and its partners in the delivery of light rail and heavy rail fleet and infrastructure, bus fleet and infrastructure, including low- and zero-emission fleet, numerous active travel projects and the supporting technologies such as ticketing and information. The committee will be aware of the ambitions the authority has to deliver the infrastructure necessary to give the people of Ireland a choice of sustainable travel, which includes BusConnects in our cities, MetroLink in Dublin, light rail in Dublin and Cork, DART+ in the Dublin region and other significant commuter rail projects in Cork, Limerick and Galway.

More than €300 million has now been invested by the Government throughout the State in walking and cycling projects, which is an increase from an average of €10 million to €15 million annually only a few years ago. The active travel programme has grown substantially thanks to the large increase in funding which has enabled all local authorities to establish the appropriate expertise in their areas to bring a number of schemes through the design and planning process. Many exciting projects are being delivered on the ground in our cities and towns, which will transform how people travel in those locations. A key priority is joining up and integrating schemes to ensure a network of safe walking and cycling infrastructure.

The authority has worked tirelessly, as have our delivery partners, following significant levels of public engagement, to bring BusConnects Dublin core bus corridors, MetroLink and the first phases of DART+ infrastructure through the planning process. We hope some of these major projects will come through the planning system shortly so we can get to the delivery phase of these important projects. A third round of public engagement is under way in Cork at the moment, which I hope will finalise the proposals for sustainable transport corridors in Cork to be developed for planning.

Project governance is of huge importance to the authority and we follow the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform’s public spending code to ensure the correct controls are in place to estimate the cost of different projects and to ensure each delivery agency has the correct controls to manage the projects through delivery. The authority has now taken on the role of designing the network of public transport services to be delivered across the State with the assistance of external expertise. This has resulted in the publication of BusConnects networks for Dublin and Cork, with the final networks for Limerick and Galway to be published next month and for Waterford in 2024. The Connecting Ireland programme is the network of services the authority wants to deliver in rural Ireland to allow people to make vital connections to education, services and to their wider communities. The authority also has plans to provide new and improved town services. It delivered a new town service in Carlow earlier this year.

The authority delivers public transport services through its contracts with Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann, Irish Rail, Go-Ahead Ireland and a number of other operators across the State. Luas services are delivered by Transdev, which is contracted to the NTA and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, as joint clients. Each operator has a number of contracted performance indicators that must be met and these are closely monitored by the authority. The authority is also responsible for the regulation of public bus services operated on a commercial basis, such as Expressway, Aircoach and Citylink.

The authority has restructured the delivery of the rural transport programme throughout Ireland, which is now branded as Local Link. We support 15 Local Link offices which manage the delivery of services locally. The Connecting Ireland programme is an ambitious programme of new and enhanced services to be delivered over five years across the country. To date, we have delivered approximately 150 such services and they are really making a difference to people who live in rural Ireland. We have seen a remarkable response from the public, with passenger numbers growing by 300% on new Connecting Ireland services compared with pre-Covid-19 pandemic figures in 2019.

The authority continues to prioritise the development of initiatives that are critical to the achievement of an integrated public transport system and to attracting new customers onto public transport services, as well as promoting walking and cycling. These include the Leap card, real-time passenger information, the national journey planner and making information available digitally on websites and apps. A number of innovative apps have been provided to make the journey as seamless as possible. However, we want to do more so we will appoint a supplier in quarter 1 of next year to build the next generation ticketing platform, which will deliver account-based ticketing across our services, facilitating the use of mobile phones, contactless bank cards and other digital forms of payment.

The taxi industry has been dealt a number of blows in the past number of years, including the impacts of the Covid pandemic. Alongside the normal regulatory work of the authority, we put in many measures to support the industry through those shocks and encourage its recovery. As of now, the number of licensed drivers across the industry has recovered to 96% of pre-Covid figures and we continue to see an increasing number of new applicants to the industry. We continue to grant aid the industry to increase the number of wheelchair accessible vehicles in the taxi fleet and the authority is on target to have 20% of the fleet being wheelchair accessible by 2025.

Sustainability is at the heart of the work of the National Transport Authority. I think we all know the challenges that we face to reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector. The avoid-shift-improve principle is key in all our work. Under the avoid principle, we encourage compact development and transit-orientated development through our transport strategies and in our interactions with development proposals. In the shift principle we are improving public transport networks and infrastructure to allow people to choose to use more sustainable travel. We are then improving the fleet by switching to low and zero-emission vehicles across bus, train and tram. We have introduced a fully zero-emission bus service in Athlone town and are now rolling out the new electric double-deck fleet across Dublin, which will be followed by Limerick next year.

I would like to conclude by recognising that the authority comprises the board, the chief executive and the staff. The overall effectiveness of the authority is dependent on each of these playing their relevant parts. We are supported in our work by the Taxi Advisory Committee and a newly established Transport Users Advisory Group who advise us as we develop policies and plans. We also have a number of external members who support the work of our board's sub-committees and whose expertise and guidance we value.

I believe that the board of the authority has been very conscious of the important public service role that we undertake. Its members have given the time and commitment necessary to the effective performance of our duties in order to ensure that the authority can successfully meet its statutory objectives. The authority is acutely aware of its accountability to Government and to the Oireachtas. The authority's executive is always available to the committees to explain the work of the authority and answer questions about the decisions that the authority makes in the course of undertaking its statutory functions. We will continue that engagement at the request of members.

The authority has a very ambitious programme of work to deliver over the next five years and I am privileged to have been appointed to this position by the Minister for Transport to guide its work. That concludes my opening statement.