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

The shameful human consequences of the Government's failure in the area of housing are personified in Sam's tragic plight and are well known. I also want to highlight another fairly shameful failure on the part of the Government in not providing a key public service to citizens. I refer to what is happening in the context of public transport and bus services. Anybody who uses buses in this city, particularly at peak times, will know how frequently buses do not arrive or arrive late. In the latter instance, when they do arrive, there are such lengthy queues that people cannot get on. Earlier this week, the National Transport Authority, NTA, produced a performance report on Go-Ahead, the privatised bus service. The privatisation of bus services is the policy the Government has pursued and implemented. It has handed out 10% of routes in this city to a private, for-profit operator and the report shows what the consequences have been. Since it took over 24 routes in 2018, Go-Ahead has consistently failed to meet its performance targets. It got away without being fined for the first few months but now fines are being imposed. On route after route, and overall in terms of its performance, the company is failing to meet the performance targets set for it by the NTA. It is discommoding young people getting to school, workers, people with disabilities and all sorts of other individuals who rely on public transport.

When the Government proposed the privatisation and outsourcing of routes, it stated that this would be cheaper and that the competition would produce better performance. Neither of those things has turned out to be the case. Go-Ahead's tender price - €171 million - was higher than that of Dublin Bus. It cost us more and its performance is way below that of Dublin Bus. We all know that Dublin Bus services could be a hell of a lot better but it must be stated that the privatisation experiment has failed. The Government should acknowledge this and abandon the privatisation agenda relating to public transport. If we want to do something about the climate, make our city work, deal with congestion and improve air quality,then we need better, cheaper public transport. With the privatisation of routes, the Government is going in precisely the opposite direction to that in which it should be going. Private bus services are not cheaper or better. At no level are they working to provide for the public transport needs of this city or the country. Will the Tánaiste accept that we need to reverse the privatisation experiment and put more money into providing better and cheaper public transport for our citizens?

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