Frank Fahey (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the publication of this Bill, which is a long time coming. It is a poor reflection on all of us that we are operating in 2009 under legislation introduced in 1932. Every Member in the House should bow their heads in shame that in this modern era, when we are trying to promote public transport, we are still operating under archaic legislation.

There are many positives in this Bill and I thank the Minister and his officials for producing what is generally a very fine piece of legislation. It will put consumer needs at the centre of the action and ensure that the issuing and administration of all bus licences, both commercial and loss-making, will transfer from the Department to the new Dublin Transport Authority, which will be integrated into the new national transport authority.

This will be a comprehensive new regime which will put consumer needs at its core. There will be very extensive powers, which I welcome, to penalise companies and revoke licences for poor performances. The question of a level playing pitch will at long last be the order of the day as a result of legislation. I will come back to that in a few moments but establishing the principle of regulated competition, as opposed to a free-for-all, is the key element of this legislation. Regulated competition is very important because we want to ensure that level playing pitch.

We want to continue to ensure that subvented services, such as those in parts of Ireland that are not commercial, will continue to operate. People in isolated rural areas and other parts of cities and working class areas should have good competition and services. It should not just be a case of cherry-picking.

This legislation is far better than the British system, which went for a free-for-all. There are many good services in Britain but there is ample evidence of poor services because of cherry-picking, predatory pricing and the creation of monopolies. I have been to cities where I have seen that at its worst. That is not to say there are no good aspects in Britain, such as in places like York and Cambridge where there are exemplary public transport systems.

This is the first time we will see a contract regime setting strict standards to be met by operators in terms of frequency, reliability, efficiency and cost, as well as customer issues like cleanliness, ticketing and real-time passenger information. There is no doubt that this is a very good legislation, which will take forward the issue of bus transport from the old regime that existed until now. It will operate in respect of all commercial bus services, whether provided by private companies, Bus Éireann or Dublin Bus. It provides for the new system to be operated by the national transport authority.

I only recently saw the Fine Gael proposals for a free-for-all and I am disappointed in them. If the Fine Gael legislation was put in place, Bus Éireann would be finished as a commercial company within five years and it would be left to provide services in rural areas which would be at a serious loss to the State. There are amendments which should be made to the Bill and I will come to them in a moment, but Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann are good companies which provide a good service. We need a comprehensive bus network on the existing routes in the city of Dublin, for example. By the same token, the unions and management in Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann have to make changes. They cannot maintain some of the restrictive work practices and archaic industrial arrangements that exist. The two companies will continue to come under significant pressure until their management and unions agree to move away from many aspects of their old-style union and management arrangements.

This Bill provides for regulated competition. If we were to throw the market open as a free for all, as Fine Gael suggests, there is no doubt that Bus Éireann and, to a lesser extent, Dublin Bus would come to a pretty quick halt over the next number of years. I assure the unions that I want to see a strong Dublin Bus and a strong Bus Éireann. I am a great believer in the two companies, which provide good services. There is no doubt that this Bill puts it up to them. They have to change the way they operate. The old days of union demarcation, old-style working habits and costs that are way out of line have to come to an end. These companies have to be prepared to face up to fair competition. Nobody can stand over a protected system that is costing consumers and taxpayers more and is providing a quality of service that is not up to the mark. I reiterate that if they make the changes I have mentioned, they will be able to meet the best in terms of competition. We can already see that the competition will be intense.

I am worried that if we have a free for all, as proposed by Fine Gael, the problems that have arisen in Great Britain will arise here too. Companies like Stagecoach adopted a predatory pricing regime and took over routes in Scotland. As soon as they had put everyone else out of business, they decided to do what they liked. The same thing was tried in this country when a number of Stagecoach executives arrived here to take over Citylink. The company is now offering 14 trips a day between Galway and Dublin Airport, even though it does not have a licence. Under its predatory pricing regime, it is charging as little as €1 per trip. We all want low prices and high frequencies, but we are not prepared to allow that kind of ethos to come into the Irish system. The idea that one can come in, break the rules, offer bus services without worrying about licences, charge passengers €1 in order to break everybody else and keep the market for one's self is not acceptable. We should do whatever is needed to stop this company from operating on the Dublin-Galway route in this manner.

I appeal to the Minister and his officials to stop what is happening. Other companies like GoBus and Bus Éireann are already operating on this route. As we are in favour of competition, we should give this company some licences, but we should not allow it to develop the kind of regime that exists in parts of Britain. There is ample evidence to show that it has not worked in Scotland, for example. Good companies went to the wall when their services were affected by the predatory pricing of other companies that did what they liked, in terms of prices and services, when there was nobody else around. I do not accept that model represents a good way of going forward.

This country has a wonderful opportunity to move from the car to the bus. The Joint Committee on Transport has placed a great deal of emphasis on the utility of the bus in dealing with this country's traffic congestion and reducing carbon emissions. There is so much potential to expand Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann and to bring in the private sector. I suggest that direct award sub-contracts should be facilitated on the routes that are currently operated by Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann. I am glad this matter is covered in the Bill because it brings an element of competition to the routes in question, while protecting the public service obligation services that currently exist. That is particularly important in a city like Galway, where there is not enough room for two companies to operate a bus service. Galway is too small for that. We should have one bus company, such as Bus Éireann, with the ability to bring in the private sector on direct award sub-contracts to operate on its network. In such circumstances, Bus Éireann would have to compete with the private sector in terms of the extra buses that would be put on. I would have no difficulty with services in certain cities, such as Limerick, Waterford or even Galway, being put out to tender in a way that would allow a private sector company to take charge.

The decision to give the new National Transport Authority responsibility for the existing Commission for Taxi Regulation is a good one. The joint committee has found in the recent past that the commission is a costly bureaucracy that is not working. I estimate that there were 7,000 taxi licences in this country before the establishment of the commission. There are now 27,000 such licences. Given that each licence costs €6,000, I estimate that the commission has taken in over €100 million. The regulator informed the committee the other day that the commission has €23 million in its kitty, at a time when the taxi situation is totally chaotic. It is all right to attempt to provide for competition, but we do not have competition in the industry any more. We have an industry in chaos, with poor services in many cases. The people who operate it cannot make a living. I recently called on the Minister to disband the Commission for Taxi Regulation. I hope that will happen when it is taken over by the new National Transport Authority. I will ask for some amendments in that regard to be made to this Bill over the coming weeks.

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