Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is not a question of drivers. I am aware that Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann are recruiting. It is about the number of physical buses we need. Nothing in the Minister's response indicates the sort of radical forward thinking we need, given the Covid crisis and the climate crisis. We do not have to argue with our population about using public transport. They want to use it. The question is whether they can get on it. At the moment, healthcare workers cannot get home from work or travel to work because of the lower capacity. I understand that this is a particular situation but this will be a problem in the future. Before Covid, people had difficulty accessing bus services on time with the same frequency. There is also the question of cost. Bus fares are excessive and have gone up hugely in the last few years. We are only now returning to the fleet numbers we had before the fleet was cut in 2009. The Minister's response is not good enough and does not deal with the issue, the climate crisis in particular.

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