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

I was not aware until a bus driver who works for Dublin Bus contacted me that a major transport conference is taking place in Dublin this week. It is the Transport Research Arena conference, which I believe the Minister for Transport, Deputy Ryan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, are at to discuss sustainable transport. The driver asked me why there are no bus drivers at the conference. The same driver keeps me informed about issues affecting bus workers. He outlined what is required if the authorities want to know how to make public transport actually work and indeed recruit and retain bus drivers, which is critical to having a system that is more reliable and with more frequent services. A huge part of the problem leading to a lack of reliability in public transport in places like Dublin is that the company cannot recruit and retain enough bus workers because the conditions are crap. If someone is working in the privatised part of the system, it is worse. Therefore, there is very little incentive to work for the companies that run the routes that are privatised. The driver I spoke to made a very good point. He asked where the representation for bus workers is at the discussions on how to modernise and make sustainable and functional the public transport we need if we want to get people out of cars and into public transport. The same thing could be said about representatives of taxi drivers.

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