Mr. Stephen Kent:

I thank the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, Deputies and Senators for inviting us to take part in today’s session. I am pleased to be joined by Mr. Allen Parker and Ms Jean O’Sullivan to present to members today. We are very pleased to share the challenges facing our organisation within the industry but I also want to affirm that there continues to be many positive developments, which also need to be supported.

Bus Éireann continues to experience unprecedented demand for its services, supporting greater modal shift, improved social accessibility and inclusivity, local economy growth and we are now really delivering very important climate action initiatives in line with Government policy, such as the decarbonisation of public transport. Last year, we carried a record 106 million passenger journeys across our public service obligation, PSO, routes, the school transport scheme and our commercial services operated under the Expressway brand. We operate all 214 of our public service obligation routes under contract to the National Transport Authority, NTA. These routes service a very comprehensive network of regional and inter-regional city, town and rural locations that deliver a nationwide bus service for communities across Ireland, helping to make life better. Last year, we delivered a 27% growth in passenger journeys across PSO compared to the previous year and strong growth continues into 2024.

We operate the school transport scheme on behalf of the Department of Education. We now transport a record 163,000 children to school every day, with in excess of 9,500 routes across the country – 38% more than we did five years ago – and this undertaking is the largest such school transport scheme in Europe.

Expressway is our commercial service, for which we have 14 routes, and last year saw significant year-on-year growth as we now complete more than 4 million passenger journeys annually. Services have expanded to meet demand including increased capacity to County Donegal and we have 150 daily departures to and from Dublin Airport across seven routes. We look forward to delivering for our customers as we approach the busy summer season.

These significant achievements would not be possible without the support of all of our stakeholders, including our dedicated and hard-working staff. We now have in excess of 3,000 employees directly employed by Bus Éireann from 51 different countries. We value all of our people and we continually strive to make our company a great place to work.

While the growth of our organisation in recent years is something we are very proud of, it has also brought fresh new challenges. There will always be challenges to overcome in a safety-critical business, which is not only growing but also undertaking a significant and progressive transformation in terms of digitalisation, decarbonisation and scale.

I want to focus today on what I see as the three top challenges facing Bus Éireann and the bus industry in Ireland today and especially over the next three years. The first is the recruitment of drivers and craft workers to meet current and future demand for our services. Staff shortages emerged as an issue for us last autumn, initially for school bus contractors and then for mechanics in our Dublin depot and most recently for drivers in our Cork depot, which impacted service delivery. Recruitment of D class licence holders is proving challenging, as there is a more limited pool of these drivers available and high demand exists across the sector. Mechanics are also in short supply, in Cork and Dublin in particular.

We have recruited nearly 500 drivers since the beginning of 2023 but we still have 66 vacancies across the country, with Cork proving to be the most challenging region for us today. We have started, and will continue with, an intensive recruitment campaign. We have deployed extensive advertising and undertaken over 30 open days this year alone. At those open days, we invite expressions of interest, provide an opportunity to meet with our staff, and people also have an opportunity to even try driving a bus. We have set up our own dedicated training schools in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Waterford to train drivers who have B class licences to achieve the requisite D class licence. This takes resources, facilities, buses and investment, and while we are making progress, induction and training takes time and we know there is even greater demand coming, particularly with future BusConnects, Connecting Ireland and the planned expansion of the school transport scheme.

We are working with agencies that have networks outside Ireland to try to recruit drivers from other countries but we will need to step up this activity. However, low availability of suitable housing is also hampering these efforts. We will need more personnel and I believe there is a role for other State agencies such as the education and training boards, SOLAS and the National Apprenticeship Office to assist, and we have started that liaison. Over the next three years, due to retirements and new services, we will need well in excess of 2,000 drivers for PSO and school transport services. This level of demand requires a more concerted and structured programme, directed at employment creation where there is a huge demand and urgent need for drivers with aptitude who will find a very rewarding career with competitive pay in companies like ours.

Today we also have 12 mechanic vacancies, predominantly in our Cork and Dublin depots. We undertook a benchmark exercise on pay and have improved terms for mechanics in January to ensure our remuneration is competitive and have also increased our quota requirement for apprentices. As our fleet expands and new skills emerge as we electrify our depots, we will need many more positions, particularly as the regional city fleets could expand by more than 50% under BusConnects. In the short term, we continue to build a pipeline of candidates who can be trained to become bus drivers and craft workers but until we fill all these positions, we will be challenged in delivering the best service we can. We will always seek to minimise any disruption to the schedule for our customers and if we have caused any inconvenience to anyone in recent weeks, I apologise and assure all of our customers that we are working hard to fill positions as quickly as possible.

The second area is congestion and lack of bus priority measures. I welcome the recent public consultation commenced by the Department of Transport on a new strategy to manage and reduce congestion. Lack of prioritisation outside of Dublin is a real challenge for Bus Éireann.

Compounded by the growth in population, especially in our regional cities, meeting our punctuality targets is proving extremely difficult to do on at least 50% of our PSO routes. Lack of enforcement of bus priority and of illegal bus stop use is also a negative input. It needs infrastructural change and enforcement is also needed for significant improvement. We can change timetables, and we do, but run times now vary so much across the weekdays and weekends as new travel patterns have developed due to hybrid working that it is inevitable that we can run late on occasion when the bus is trapped in traffic. In many instances, if funding is available, we can and do deploy additional buses and drivers to assist the schedule and keep the service on time, but there is a significant cost to improving reliability and punctuality on this basis alone.

The real solution lies in creating more dedicated lanes and ensuring enforcement of the use of these lanes, as we see in many other countries. At present, just 2% of the kilometres travelled by our vehicles in Cork are in bus lanes. On the 220 and 220X route, it will cost an estimated €1.5 million to further improve reliability and punctuality on that route, owing in large part to congestion issues. Money will fix it for some time, assuming the NTA has funding available, and may help both deliver more punctual services to our customers and help our company avoid punctuality penalties. However, it is not the long-term solution as the economy and our population grows. This is just one example of an extremely successful route – a 24 hour service – with the best value fare which would convince anyone to leave their car behind. It could be much better, however. We need to address the allocation of road space. We know the pinch points and we need the collaboration of all stakeholders to deliver the changes that are required. We know we can deliver the service and what our customers expect and we need to take advantage of the growth in public transport, which has started in earnest. That will only happen through collective action and re-allocation of road space or the introduction of bus priority measures.

The third area I wish to highlight is the pace at which we can transition the fleet to lower or zero emission technologies to achieve our climate action targets. Increasing sustainable mobility and our drive for net zero emissions by 2050 underpins all we do. In recent months, we have marked one year of a fully electric bus service in Athlone. This service saw a 25% increase in customers in the first 12 months of our operation. The people of Limerick will now enjoy the roll-out of our first city EV fleet after a major investment by the NTA. We remain committed to helping the country achieve its climate action plan goals and bring about modal shift as we move away from car dependency. While progress on decarbonisation of bus services is now advancing for our cities and towns, more support is needed, specifically in transitioning our coach fleet rather than our bus fleet, which operate longer distances. This transition will require the support of the coach manufacturers for new alternatives to diesel but the capital cost of change is also a major consideration for all commercial operators. Currently over 95% of the schools operation is carried out by contractors with many of them using coaches. Transitional supports need to be further examined to help support the capital case for Expressway and other commercial operators to begin the transition and reduce emissions, particularly as more 4,000 vehicles which operate today will have to be replaced over the next five years.

In conclusion, notwithstanding the three major challenges I have highlighted, we are optimistic about the future. Collaboration and communication is the key to success in helping us to overcome the challenges of today and meet the needs of tomorrow. We believe it is possible to double passenger journeys from our current levels, which as I have already mentioned stood at 106 million journeys last year, and we will always strive to meet the growing demand for our services safely, but safety will always be our first priority. We offer quality jobs and work for a customer-focused company which is dedicated to delivering green, reliable and good value public transport to our country as we sustainably connect people and their communities. I thank the Cathaoirleach for inviting Bus Éireann and we look forward to the discussion.