Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

Is it not the case that even at the height of the boom the number of people travelling to work by bus was dropping? I believe it decreased by approximately 3% in 2005. It is anticipated that the number travelling by bus will decrease further and now 290 Dublin Bus workers have been made redundant and 120 buses that the taxpayer bought are to be mothballed. What will happen to those buses? This is a failure of Government policy to open the market to competition. If Dublin Bus cannot use those buses, why should they lie mothballed given that thousands of people living in the greater Dublin area have no bus service? Why not offer the buses, which taxpayers own, to private enterprise to operate routes that do not exist at present? There is no point in mothballing them for the next number of years.

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