Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise the issue of public transport services, particularly bus services, in the greater Dublin area, but it is unfortunate the Minister for Transport and Marine is not in the House to respond. I raise these issues in the context of significant under provision of public transport generally within the area.

We know it makes sense for all kinds of reasons — economic, social and environmental — to encourage and facilitate as many people as possible to use public transport. In the past, the need was to convince people of that argument, but now they fully accept it. The issue now is the Government's inability to provide adequate public transport to meet the demand. It is clear from the length of bus queues during the morning and evening peaks and the cramming of people into buses, trains, the DART and the Luas that the demand far outstrips supply. This is the challenge for the Government, but it has failed in this regard in recent years.

Late last year the Government finally allowed Dublin Bus to acquire the 100 additional buses that had been promised for years. To date, only 40 of these have been put into service, leaving 60 brand new buses idle in garages around the city while people stand in queues waiting for buses to get them into or home from work. This makes no sense. This morning the Taoiseach said the reason was that there were not enough drivers. This is not true. Dublin Bus has been recruiting drivers for the past six months and has many new drivers ready and able to take up employment. Unfortunately, Dublin Bus has not received the necessary approval from the Department to deploy the buses on the routes on which they are needed. Dublin Bus proposes to introduce new routes, the 141 to serve the huge conurbation of Swords and the 128 for the north fringe and the housing development there. People are demanding these services and Dublin Bus is ready to provide them but is precluded from doing so because the Department will not provide the necessary approval. It claims it has received requests from private operators, but there seems to be a serious ideological hang-up or log-jam in the system. As long as an application from a private operator is under consideration the public bus company is not allowed to provide new services. That does not make sense. Those applications could be under consideration for nine or ten months or even longer because of the inefficient system in the Department. Meanwhile people are left without services.

Dublin Bus wants to use the Dublin Port Tunnel as a fast route into the city centre. It has started to do this recently for the 41X bus, an express bus running from the Swords area into the city centre every morning. Six buses operate on the route. A total of 25 minutes could be cut off the journey time if the buses used the Dublin Port Tunnel. As the buses are full by the time they reach Whitehall where they hit the traffic jams, they would not bypass passengers. As express buses they should have a direct route into the city centre.

The route has been provided at taxpayers' expense in the form of the Dublin Port Tunnel. It is a fast, direct route and it makes sense for Dublin Bus to use it but because a private operator has submitted a request the Department of Transport and Marine will not allow Dublin Bus to do the sensible and rational thing. I appeal to the Minister of State to give the message clearly to the Minister for Transport and Marine that people in Dublin cannot afford to wait any longer for decent bus services. The buses and the drivers are in place. They await only approval from the Department of Transport and Marine. I urge the Minister to do the sensible thing, give those approvals and provide people with the service to which they are entitled.

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