Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

I wish to raise the issue of safety on our public transport system, following an incident last week in Tallaght where a young man was thrown out of the top window of a bus. This is the latest in a series of such incidents. Something similar happened a few years ago in Tallaght when buses were stoned. Elected representatives, members of the Garda, the community, the unions and South Dublin County Council met to try to resolve the situation. Unfortunately, these incidents continue to occur.

I have a list of incidents that have occurred recently, which includes passenger abuse, a row on a bus, drug taking on a bus, a child assaulted on a bus, bottles thrown on the upper saloon of a bus, abuse of a driver, spitting at a driver, passengers causing disturbances, a man set on fire, broken windows, stone throwing, syringes found on the upper saloon, anti-social behaviour, fighting on the upper saloon of a bus, youths setting fire to a bus with lighters, youths setting fire to a bus with paper and passengers assaulted. These are just some of the incidents that have been reported to the Garda and to Dublin Bus. What is happening is unacceptable. We need to look at the serious incident that occurred on Friday and come up with new ways of tackling the problem that exists.

The current system that operates in Tallaght is called Operation Saferoute, but I presume it operates elsewhere in the city. These assaults are not just happening in the Tallaght area as it is a general problem. When people use public transport they expect the service to be safe, clean, reliable and to be reasonably priced. Having listened to the list of incidents I have read out, I do not think that anybody would feel safe getting on a bus. We were assured a few years ago that CCTV would be put in every bus. However, that has not happened. The drivers, management, gardaí involved and members of the community all suffer due to these incidents. The community suffers because the buses are withdrawn and because members of the community are often victims on the buses. The drivers suffer because they are terrified of the incidents that happen and of being assaulted. The Garda Síochána is suffering due to the bad publicity involved and Dublin Bus is also suffering because people are less likely to get on the bus. A different response is needed.

We need a higher visibility of gardaí in the area, which will not be a drain on resources. However, we need extra resources as well. In other jurisdictions there are river police, transport police and so on. We need to look at that in the long term. In the short term, we need to provide assurances to the travelling public that the buses will continue to run and that this hooligan element will be removed.

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