Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State on his new role and wish him the best in it. Public transport is a key challenge facing the country, but there is a lot of potential there to provide a service that will benefit so many communities across the country, and it is a vital service that we need to invest in and make sure operates properly. Key to any really good, successful public service is reliability. If it is not reliable, it completely undermines the whole system. People and the public have to have trust that a bus will show up when it says it will show up. We have seen the BusConnects programme being rolled out across Dublin and, in particular, I will talk about north Wicklow over recent weeks. This programme has been talked about and promised for a long time. There were quite a number of false starts with it but it was eventually rolled out a number of weeks ago. Unfortunately, when it was rolled out, the provider was not ready for it. GoAhead Ireland was contracted to provide a service under the BusConnects programme, and it was clear that it did not have enough staff or enough capacity to actually roll this programme out.

We had an incredible situation where three, four or five buses in a row were being cancelled on particular routes and there were drivers who did not know where they were meant to be going. People were really frustrated. College kids could not get to college and people were missing interviews. It caused enormous difficulties for people when it should have been a positive addition to the locality. This should have been a positive news story but because Go-Ahead Ireland was not prepared, it completely undermined things and still has not got fully on top of it. I had a meeting with the company. Apparently it did not have enough mechanics, which it is now recruiting. There is a really serious question here about why Go-Ahead Ireland got this service. How was it contracted to provide this service when it is not able to fulfil the most basis terms of service, namely, that a bus shows up when it is timetabled to do so? That is something I would like the Minister of State to examine in his role. If we contract out, those contractors are being paid to do a job and they must be able to do that job. This impacts everybody, but what has been raised with me is the huge problems that are caused for people with disabilities when their buses do not show up.

As I said, Go-Ahead Ireland has been contracted to provide this service. I understand a new tender has gone out and I think the company is also to get the new contract. Why is that and how is the Government going to be sure the company is going to be able to fulfil that? Dublin Bus provided the service on many of these routes previously. It was in a much better position to provide this service and it is problematic when we see this privatisation, especially when the private operators are not able to provide the service. I want to ask the Minister of State about this because I have been told a number of other routes are going to be privatised. They are going to be taken from Dublin Bus and given to other operators. One of those routes is in west Wicklow in my constituency: the 65 that goes from Ballymore Eustace through Blessington into Dublin. Can the Minister of State confirm that the 65 route is going to be privatised and can he explain why when we see so many failures with the current privatisation of the system?

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