Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and congratulate my colleague, Deputy Shortall, for proposing the motion.

I want to pick up on the final straightforward point made by Deputy McManus on the need for joined up thinking between the local authorities and public transport services. A consultant's report was commissioned to examine the transport problems and daily gridlock in the Terenure area. Terenure is in my constituency and has an overlap between two local authorities. That consultant's report is gathering dust somewhere and there has been no movement whatsoever on it.

We need more buses to alleviate the frustration drivers feel whenever they are stuck in traffic beside an empty bus lane. More buses are what we need to convince drivers they will be better off leaving their cars at home. We need 500 more buses and we need them immediately. We need buses which disabled people can use. While I realise such buses are slowly being rolled out, I receive regular complaints about the lack of such a facility. We need buses which sell and accept Luas, DART and Iarnród Éireann tickets.

We need buses which arrive on time. We need timetables that indicate when a bus is supposed to arrive at a bus stop, not when it is supposed to have left the terminus. We need real-time information at bus stops, like that on the Luas, telling users when the next bus will arrive. The number of buses which do not arrive on time, or at all, in my constituency seems to be as bad as it was 20 years ago.

In 1854 omnibuses left Terenure every half hour and by 1857 there was one every 15 minutes. Today, according to a Dublin Bus timetable, rush hour is the only time when there are four 15A buses per hour travelling from Terenure into town. Those buses end up in gridlock because of the lack of QBCs, or incomplete QBCs, that afford priority to buses. When one adds the uncertainty that the bus one is waiting for might have left the terminus early, or may not have left it at all, one is left with the conclusion that our bus service is no better than it was more than 100 years ago.

The Luas runs through a significant part of my constituency and is a very welcome innovation. It is reliable and the commuter actually knows when the next one is due to arrive. However, we need Luas trams which are not so full that four or five can pass during rush hour before one can, by pushing and shoving, somehow manoeuvre oneself into the carriage. I have had two complaints in the last week from constituents who had to allow three trams go by because they were so overcrowded.

We need a fairer fare system. As Deputy Shortall has already suggested, we need a €1 fare which allows one to travel anywhere in Dublin. We also need park and ride facilities that will allow motorists the facility to leave their cars in a secure location, sufficiently far from the city centre to avoid more congestion.

Transport 21 delivered only 17 new buses in 2005 and 15 this year and, in both cases, the buses were not operational until November or December. The same Transport 21 seems to have overlooked large segments of my constituency — there are no plans for Luas or metro for the Terenure, Kimmage, Harold's Cross or Walkinstown areas. When one looks at the map setting out the plans for transport, there is a gap in my constituency that, a constituent remarked, looks like the Phoenix Park. I recently asked a question about this, and the Minister assured me that buses were the way to go in this area. However, when I asked him about the number of buses, he told me that it was nothing to do with him and was solely a matter for Dublin Bus.

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