Fiona O'Malley (Dún Laoghaire, Progressive Democrats)

I welcome the announcement by the Minister of the establishment of a Dublin transport authority. That is great news for Dublin's public transport users because the authority will consolidate the functions of various agencies in providing services and, more importantly, will deliver new licences.

An additional 100 bus licences will be delivered to private operators, who will also be subject to public service obligations. For the first time, accurate data will be collected on commercial viability, which will allow us to identify profitable routes and help us to deliver a better transport service. Despite repeated efforts by the Department, Dublin Bus has been very reluctant to provide figures on the viability and profitability of individual bus routes. Henceforth, private operators will be required to provide this information to the Dublin transport authority and because they will be competing directly with public operators, the disparity will not be great between their figures and those of Dublin Bus.

Where there was competition from both Luas and DART services, Irish Rail transformed its practices to such an extent that while Transport 21 proposed the opening in 2009 of a new Dublin city centre rail centre at Spencer Dock, this will now happen next March, two years ahead of schedule. This is because Irish Rail recognised that it was a competitor for public money and decided——

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