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

It is about citizens. The Minister is absolutely right.

These corridors seem like a good idea and I would be in favour of them. My fear, which was touched on by Deputy Ellis, is that against a background of consistent reductions in subsidies in the form of the public service payments to Dublin Bus, which have dropped every year, including every year under this Government - from €85 million in 2008 to €60 million now, which amounts to a €25 million loss in Exchequer funding for Dublin Bus - there will end up being a trade-off between these super bus routes, which we need and which are a good development, and the public service obligation to provide commercially unviable routes to citizens. Here, indeed, the distinction between consumers and citizens is quite an important one, because with the reduction in subsidies from the Exchequer to Dublin Bus, the temptation - indeed, I would say, the pressure - tangibly evident within Dublin Bus to see passengers as purely consumers from whom it can get money will result in the cutting of routes that it considers not to be profitable or financially viable. There should not be a trade-off, but it is becoming a trade-off. Sadly, my constituency is one in which it is being felt particularly acutely.

I engaged with the Minister, or one of the Ministers of State from the Department, before the summer recess about what can only be described as the savaging of whole public service routes, or the public service element of routes which, although they might be busy routes, contain parts that are not considered to be particularly profitable. There are plans to either change or cut altogether the Dublin Bus routes 7, 111, 8, 59, 45A and 63. All of those changes, or out-and-out cuts, will hit working-class communities, where there are particularly large numbers of users who are elderly or very young on routes which are not the big commuter routes. In the case of the 7, which is a big commuter route, the part of that route which I suspect Dublin Bus feels is not very financially useful to it - the part that goes through Sallynoggin, and has gone through it for as long as I can remember - will be cut, dealing a significant blow to Sallynoggin. Similarly, Killiney village is losing its bus altogether. The frequency of buses going into Loughlinstown Park, a very disadvantaged working-class area, will be cut in order to facilitate the super commuter route from Cherrywood, which is considered to be a large transport hub. I will not go through the full list, but this is happening.

Indeed, it is no coincidence that many of those routes I have just mentioned are also routes that are part of the outsourcing or privatisation that the Government is pushing through the plan to privatise 10% of orbital routes. It is not a coincidence that these routes are being slashed; they are also the ones earmarked for privatisation, and they are being replaced with the super commuter routes. The Minister should not get me wrong; I want the super commuter routes, but they should be additional to the routes that serve communities, villages, and areas where there is a high proportion of elderly people and so on.

However, that is not happening because the Minister has slashed the subsidy to Dublin Bus, which was already one of the lowest anywhere in Europe. The Minister is engaging in the classic mechanism for privatisation of a service. Although he will deny it and say it is only a bit of privatisation, it is clear what is happening. Bus routes on which communities have depended for decades will be lost in order to facilitate the privatisation agenda and push Dublin Bus away from the public service model into a commercial, for-profit model. For this reason, I am very worried about it. The BRT will accelerate the pressure, although it is a good thing in itself.

In my remaining two minutes, I will discuss taxis. While some of the regulations and changes seem to be reasonably positive, taxi drivers will have concerns about others. Section 2(a), which will bring dispatch operators who are working off apps such as Hailo under the regulation of the NTA, seems like a good thing. Some of these operators could undermine, and are undermining, existing taxi drivers. To bring them under some regulatory framework is a positive move. However, there are other aspects that are more worrying. Section 2(h) specifies that where the licensing authority decides not to grant a licence or to revoke or suspend a licence, there can no appeal. No process in which a decision could be made that could affect the livelihood of a taxi driver should be without an appeals process. There should always be an appeals process. This must be examined.

I have previously raised with the Minister on behalf of taxi drivers a serious problem which arose most recently around the decision to change the fare structure. This required the recalibration of meters, which was a cost for taxi drivers. The representatives of the taxi drivers said the taxi advisory committee did not properly consult with them and that the NTA imposed decisions without a proper consultation process. The Bill should address such matters and provide that there be real consultation rather than high-handed imposition of decisions from above in a way that can potentially be detrimental to the livelihoods of those workers.

I do not have time to make my final point.

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