Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

This grouping of amendments would eviscerate the Bill. The reforms introduced in the Bill are critical because we continue to operate under the Road Transport Act 1932 in respect of bus licensing. That Act was introduced to protect railways in an era when bicycles and horses were the key modes of transport. My party has problems with the Bill in regard to ensuring a level playing pitch when competition starts, which is why we cannot give it our full support. However, I concur with the principle of replacing the chaotic free-for-all which existed heretofore with a good system of strictly regulated competition.

The Joint Committee on Transport recently heard a presentation by Citylink, which is the Irish branch of one of the largest bus transport companies in the world. It operates a fleet of approximately 45,000 buses in China, the Far East and various European markets. In Ireland, it illegally operated a bus link between Galway and Dublin. It planned to operate buses every five minutes between Galway and Dublin Airport in defiance of the departmental officials who refused it a licence. As a law breaker, the company should not perhaps have been invited before the committee in the first place. The fact that it behaved like a privateer as if the law on transport licensing did not apply to it demonstrates the need for further legislation on strictly regulated and sustainable competition. It was going to use the cut-throat practices that were successful in other markets to drive a well established private company and Bus Éireann off the route. For that reason, I cannot agree to this grouping of amendments.

The system provided in this legislation for urban and interurban transport represents a reasonable compromise in many respects. We have to pass the Bill before 3 December or we will be in breach of EU Directive 1370/2007. That directive initiates a ten year process of gradually opening up transport markets. The Bill recognises this in respect of Dublin Bus and, to a lesser extent, Bus Éireann. Officials from the Department of Transport and the Office of the Attorney General have tried to achieve a reasonable compromise in this regard.

I referred on Second Stage to a major study of transport deregulation in the UK carried out by that country's Office of Fair Trading. Aspects of London's transport market resemble the proposals made by Deputy O'Dowd but the rest of the UK has had regulated competition for the past 20 years. The study revealed that a monopolistic situation has developed, whereby four large companies, including the one which came before the committee, split the market between them. They rarely compete against each other and use all kinds of scams, such as exclusivity. If competitors operate along one of their routes, they schedule their own buses five minutes prior to the competing service in order to make it impossible to establish a foothold. They have also used other anti-competitive measures such as the salami slicing of routes, whereby they withdraw from portions of routes which service poorer areas until the relevant local authority steps in to provide a subsidy. The scams are of such an extent that the Office of Fair Trading referred the British transport market to the UK Competition Commission on anti-competitive grounds. The amendments proposed by Deputy O'Dowd could have the result of creating a similar outcome here, which would be in nobody's interest. It would simply benefit one of the four large companies in question, one of which is related to the company which operates Citylink. A monopoly would emerge similar to that which obtains in Liverpool, Hull and Middlesbrough where services are provided by one company. The four companies in question own the system which results in private monopolies. We must avoid such a scenario at all costs.

A few days ago, I asked the Minister for information on the PSO — public service obligation — subsidy to Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann and Irish Rail. The figures contradict what my colleague, Deputy O'Dowd, from the Fine Gael Party stated. It is striking how consistent the subsidy has been. As the Deputy will be aware, the subsidy to Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann has been declining and is now less than it was in several years at the start of the decade. This reduction is due to major cutbacks introduced in the April budget.

The information shows that since the turn of the millennium Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann and Irish Rail have been operating on a subsidy of approximately 27%, 12% and 42%, respectively. Rail, as Deputies will be aware, is the most expensive mode of transport. These figures compare favourably to subsidies provided to transport operators in other countries. One does not find large regional operators such as Bus Éireann operating on a subsidy of 12% in Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany. Some of the companies operating in these countries receive subsidies of 78% and 80%. In other words, the system in these countries is run as a public service to link communities. None of these facts comes through in the arguments made by privateers.

The most striking feature of subsidisation is that the private system I have described in the United Kingdom receives a subsidy of 33%. The four monopolistic operators to which I referred receive a subsidy from the British Government, through its local authorities, of one third of operating costs, which is almost three times the level of subsidy provided to Bus Éireann and in excess of that provided to Dublin Bus. That is the reality of the so-called competition in operation in the United Kingdom for the past 20 years. We must move carefully to ensure members of the public do not lose services and end up with a worse transport system under the guise of reform.

The Deloitte report found conclusively that Bus Éireann was a highly efficient company. While it noted that some reforms were required in the networking of Dublin Bus — I understand reforms are under way in this area — it also noted that, by and large, the company ran a good service.

The Minister spoke eloquently in the debate on the National Asset Management Agency Bill. We still have economists who worked for banks telling us how to get out of the financial crisis and what measures should be taken in the budget. Do these people not have any shame? Having worked for the banks, their representatives have brass necks appearing on television to give advice on budget cuts. They should cease practising their profession because they failed us and their companies. They did not see what was coming, even though ordinary citizens saw it coming for two or three years.

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