Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I bring to the Minister of State’s attention issues that occur regularly in my constituency regarding the provision of public transport. I am lucky to represent one of the youngest and fastest growing parts of this island. The needs of the communities I represent are many and varied but the one thing that comes back time and again is dissatisfaction with the quality and frequency of public transport. I have already corresponded directly with the Minister for Transport regarding the famous north County Dublin disappearing buses. Yet, the Government chose to award the contract again to Go-Ahead when it seems to be the primary offender in my area.

What is that like and what is the impact of these disappearing buses? It has happened to me many times as well. The bus is up on the display. You stand there and wait, and then the bus disappears off the display and you have no idea when the bus will come. What it does, and the reason I am raising this, is that it undermines the confidence people can have in public transport. What do they do when they cannot rely on the bus? They take their car. They get let down by the bus time and again, with no choice then but to join all of the traffic heading down the M1 in the morning, contributing to carbon emissions and doing things they do not want to have to do but are left with no choice. Many mornings, parents are forced to drive their kids to school because the bus does not turn up. Again, these are young students who are losing confidence with the public transport system. This, of course, adds to the number of cars on the road but it also means everybody is running late for the day. If it were an infrequent occurrence, I would not be raising it. However, it is a daily occurrence. It is not acceptable for my area to be left behind in this way.

Projects such as the DART+ and the Metro are announced and then, for some reason, we get put to the back. DART+ was announced, but it will go to another part of Dublin, even though it is more than ten years now since the bridges were raised on the northern line to accommodate the DART. We get put behind other parts of Dublin when the need is acute.

I use the example of Lusk, a town in my area with a growing population. The Lusk action group wrote recently to the National Transport Authority, NTA, to highlight its concerns and frustration at the poor state of public transport in our area. The population of Lusk town has more than trebled in recent years, from 2,456 in 2002 to 8,806 in 2022. With it, we have seen a massive growth in the demand for accessible, reliable public transport. Here is the letter they wrote to the NTA, which states:

...frequent bypassing of waiting passengers, often with empty buses, most commonly occurring in Rush on Monday and Friday for the 16:07 33X, coinciding with kids coming out of St. Joseph’s Secondary School. This leaves the pupils from St. Joseph's waiting an hour and 15 minutes for the next bus.

With the 33X, feedback suggests that up to 15 people are left standing at the bus stop every morning, which is unsafe and uncomfortable for passengers. The 801 and the 826 have been cancelled on a number of occasions. The knock-on impact for workers waiting on those buses is of course they are late for work. I have spoken to people who are on the final written warning in their workplace simply because they are late all the time. It is not their fault. They have to rely on the bus. The start time of the Sunday bus service does not suit workers who work in the airport, which many of my constituents do. Again, they are forced to get into their cars. There are issues with the 14 and the 47. The 33A from Lusk to Swords is cancelled most Fridays. I get emails about it. That bus service does not seem to run at all and yet there is a real demand for it.

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