Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to speak on the motion, which has many wonderful and admirable asks which we have all been hearing from our constituents throughout the country, be it the western rail link to Donegal or rural transport in general. One thing I would like to focus on is the issue of security on our transport services. On social media in recent days we have seen an incident that took place on Amiens Street outside Connolly station or at the Amiens Street bus stops at the intersection with the Luas. It is a very busy transport node. There was an incident of what seemed like young men having a running fight. The video is 20 or 30 seconds long. It is another in a long line of videos that are quite disturbing and show a level of violence that would make anyone in the vicinity feel very frightened. I saw one of the videos was shot from a bus. People who were on public transport would have felt paralysed and, if these people had forced their way onto the bus, they would have been in a difficult situation. We have had calls for transport policing and the motion contains a call for a transport policing unit. We need to tease that out. What does it look like? Is this a unit of An Garda Síochána? If transport policing is to be part of the overall solution, it should be part of An Garda Síochána. On the Luas, for example, we have private security operators who are dressed like Robocop, as I would describe it. They do not add overall to a degree of security. They look quite militarised and like they are tooled up and generally I feel they add to feeling unsafe.

What I would like to see in the first instance all across our transport sector is an increase in ordinary transport workers, be they workers at train stations or inspectors on buses, which we used to have. They were good, well-paid, traditional transport jobs with good conditions. That is something we have seen shrink over the years. We have gone from stations that had staff to making a virtue out of staffless stations with an electronic unit where people can swipe their cards and all that. We need to get back to having staffed stations and transport nodes and having inspectors on buses before we get to the stage of having a tooled-up transport policing unit. Overall that leads to an increase of securitisation in our transport infrastructure when we should be looking at attracting workers to the traditional roles across Irish Rail, Dublin Bus and all our transport operators. Ultimately, if we have a transport policing solution, we will not be able to have security guards on every bus in every town and city in Ireland. It is a deeper problem. It is an easy thing to say we need a transport police and maybe there does have to be a role for An Garda Síochána and some kind of multidepartmental or cross-sectoral approach in terms of security.

We should start with hiring back staff and having better staff levels, having people working on our platforms who are able to assist those with disabilities when they find themselves, as they all too often do, unable to access trains or to get on buses. Another part of this motion is something my party and many other Opposition parties have called for, which is ensuring people with disabilities are prioritised in our transport system. Buses that are being purchased into our fleets now are required to have proper accessibility.

However, I have spoken to wheelchair users who still have difficulties accessing these modern buses. In some cases, their wheelchairs are so big and difficult to manoeuvre that, even if they can get onto a bus, it means that bus is full from another disabled person's point of view. We are getting fleets of buses that may be accessible for many people with disabilities but only for one of them at a time. If someone is waiting further down the line, that bus will drive past. There is much more to be done before we have a truly accessible public transport service.

Previous contributors spoke about the western rail corridor and the rail link to Donegal. I will speak about something a little closer to home, namely, the MetroLink project. I am delighted the railway order has gone to An Bord Pleanála and is out for public consultation. I have spoken many times about why this project is important and that point has been well made. I want to focus on another element, which is how these big projects are important, not just in and of themselves and not just to meet our climate targets but also in how they impact on the delivery of other projects. In the case of MetroLink - the same thing is played out in other parts of the country - the ramifications of a project that is so long in the pipeline is that other projects, including accessibility measures, transport measures and other things local authorities should be doing, are put on hold indefinitely.

Such projects include micro-local issues like the Pinnock Hill roundabout in Swords, which has no safe crossing such as a bridge over it like there is on other roundabouts, traffic lights or a pedestrian junction. There is a hole in the bush in the middle of the dual carriageway through which commuters trying to get from Swords village, where they have been left off by the bus, must make their way to get to work in Airside Retail Park. They have to dash across two lanes of traffic to get to the median and the hole in the bush. Coming from the other way, there are school-goers travelling from the Holywell estate, which has more than 2,500 houses and apartments, trying to get to the school on Main Street. Fingal County Council refuses to invest in Pinnock Hill roundabout because it is waiting for MetroLink to be delivered. It does not want to have to rip up infrastructure at a cost of a couple of hundred thousand euro, €1 million or however much it will be because it is waiting for the €1 billion project to come down the stream. Fingallians GAA Club is located a couple of roundabouts up from Pinnock Hill roundabout but it cannot expand its pitch because it is waiting for the distributor road for Swords. I know roads are very unfashionable at the moment but the need for a distributor relief road is part of the long-term planning for Swords. Again, that project cannot proceed until the big MetroLink project is delivered. These projects are important. It is not all about the statement projects on which a Taoiseach, Tánaiste or Minister for Transport will cut the ribbon down the line. They are holding up other, smaller but very important projects that are necessary to deliver accessibility, active travel and good community infrastructure.

The issues relating to Go-Ahead Ireland and the privatisation of our transport system, which affect commuters in Dublin, Kildare and north Wicklow, are something we have raised a number of times over recent months. They have been raised countless times by my colleague, Corina Johnston, our representative in Donabate-Portrane. Councillor Robert O'Donoghue, too, has raised the issues with the services in our area. I met with people from Go-Ahead Ireland a couple of weeks ago in Ballymount and expressed to them in person our utter dissatisfaction with the service that is currently being provided. They made their case in regard to staffing issues and all the rest but the fact is there are staff in businesses all over the greater Dublin area who are unable to make it to work on time because this service is failing at such a level.

As the Minister of State mentioned, the fines are large, they have been applied and the companies are paying them, but they seem to be able to afford to do so. They are not going any way to improving their services. In fact, the services seem to have deteriorated. All across public transport, in State companies, private companies and school transport providers, there is a difficulty in hiring and retaining workers, including drivers. Many issues are at play but one that is a common undercurrent to all of this, in transport, the health service and elsewhere, is that the ability to afford to live in and around Dublin and other major cities - indeed, anywhere in the country - is becoming so difficult because of the price of housing that people are unable to afford to take a job as a bus driver, whether for Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann, Go-Ahead Ireland or any other transport company. That is where we are at this point. What was traditionally a good, secure, well-paid job with good conditions, which enabled people to have a family, take a holiday, enjoy Christmas and run a home, no longer exists as a result of the suppression of wages and conditions. If we really are to improve our public transport system and our transport system in general, we need to value those workers and the jobs they do and pay them accordingly.

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