Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Dublin Bus is making €11 million in profits, carrying 4 million extra passengers and these numbers continue to rise. That means we need more, not fewer, buses. This is about profit, nothing more. For the Government, as the Minister of State has just done, to pass this off, claiming it has to do with the NTA and Dublin Bus, is nonsense. The NTA was set up by Fianna Fáil and continued by this Government. Owen Keegan, a Dublin city manager, and John Fitzgerald, a former city manager, are on the NTA board and are the Government’s appointees. We want them called to heel. It is this and the previous Governments’ decisions to cut subsidies to public transport in Dublin city from €85 million down to €60 million that has generated an artificial crisis in Dublin Bus services. This then has become the excuse for Owen Keegan, John Fitzgerald and other bodies to demand the reconfiguration of bus routes, meaning cuts. We lost the No. 46A through Monkstown Farm as a result of this process.

Now we will lose the No. 7 services through Sallynoggin from Loughlinstown. Killiney village will be devastated without the No. 59, Mackintosh Park etc. Of course, several of these routes are also earmarked for privatisation. It is a set-up what is going on here. There will be fury about this, and it will not be only as it was in one isolated area in Monkstown Farm on the last occasion. This is across the whole of Dún Laoghaire.

I ask the Minister to not fob this off. The Minister should intervene stating this is not acceptable. Dublin Bus is making profits. We have more passengers. We need more, not fewer, buses through those areas. The Minister should say, "No way", to these cuts.

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