Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

What we need in a public transport system is that it is reliable, efficient, accessible and cost-effective. The reliability issue is the one I want to deal with first and I want to pick up on the point in regard to Go-Ahead Ireland. Kildare was the first area where the buses transferred across from Bus Éireann and we were told at the time it would be a seamless service. Last week, the fines for Go-Ahead Ireland in regard to Kildare were €450,000 for the first six months because it did not provide that reliable service. We were told it would be on the hour, every hour, but the bus routinely does not turn up. It is not as if there is a ten-minute gap between one and the next. People are left waiting and when the next bus arrives, it is full.

These are real examples, not hypothetical situations. Employees are at risk of losing their jobs because of persistent lateness. College students have missed exams and they routinely miss classes. Primary school pupils are left stranded by the bus service for upwards of 80 minutes. There is no other public transport option on most of these routes. In Clane, for example, there is no train and no alternative service. Last night, for the bus service that comes out of town on the half-hour, every hour, the 7.30 p.m. bus did not turn up, the 8.30 p.m. bus did not turn up and people then got on the 9.30 p.m. bus. Why would anyone use public transport when that is their experience? The unfortunate thing is that this is not unusual.

This is the commuter belt. It is an area with a very large population. If we do not provide public transport that is reliable, people will get in their cars. I do not know if the Minister has noticed, but the M4 and M7 feature every single solitary day on AA Roadwatch and, in fact, the difficulties are local as well as national.

BusConnects is not just a rural issue. The C spine, which was the second spine delivered for BusConnects, is a very mixed bag. There are not enough drivers, there are the same problems with buses not turning up and there are fewer peak services than there were before the C spine. Peak-time services would leave at different departure points and they are very often full at some locations. Not a day goes by when I do not get complaints, and this is a year after it was introduced. In some parts of that C spine, it is working fine but where it is not working, it is a disaster.

The Social Democrats did a survey in north Kildare which had 1,200 respondents. We sent it to BusConnects, which pretty much said “Thanks very much for the survey but all we are going to do is scale back on one of the services.” I think that is what it did to begin with: it put in a service that was likely to fail so it could take it off. Who is this service for, if it is not for the NTA and not for the people using it? People are saying that there are loads of buses but they have no service. If we cannot go back and look at that, what is the point?

The key issue is that people are getting back in their cars and once they do that, it is very difficult to get them back onto public transport when they have had a very poor experience. If we look at land use and all of the city apartments that are being built, what is happening is that families are moving further out into Fingal, Meath and Kildare, and it is increasing the demand when the service is not reliable. One could not say that Go-Ahead Ireland is providing a service. Nobody wants the fines. What they want is the service but it seems incapable of delivering a service that meets the needs or is reliable. A contract is a two-way thing. If Go-Ahead Ireland is not meeting the contract, then the contract has to be revoked. It is just not good enough. It is every single solitary day, and this is not an unusual thing that is happening. As I said, land use is exacerbating the situation in that there is increased demand but less service.

We absolutely need an accessible service but reliability is equally important to people with disabilities as it is to people who do not have disabilities. This should be a universal system that is reliable but that is not what we are getting at the moment.

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