Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. On reliability and improvements, there have been some improvements, but when we are still missing services that is going to hugely impact on the people who require that particular bus. For example, the bus from Newcastle has been frequently dropped. If there are improvements in say, the L3 in Delgany, that is not going to make any difference to the person in Newcastle who needs to get to work. It cannot be the case that there are slight improvements. We must see reliability across the whole system. Every bus that is due must turn up on time when it is meant to turn up and where it is meant to turn up.

I raise also the Xpress services. In Greystones we had the 84X Xpress service. It was a very good service that got people from Greystones into town in good time. It was run by Dublin Bus and was reliable. Under the BusConnects programme this is now being covered by the X1 and X2. There are a couple of problems with this. It now takes perhaps half an hour longer for the Xpress service to get to where it needs to go because of the changes, but as well as that the NTA has dropped a number of daytime services so it is now only a rush-hour service. My message to the Minister of State is this: if it is not broken, please do not fix it. The 84X was an excellent service that everyone appreciated. The service should have been expanded rather than being reduced and being made take longer. It is incredible that under the “transformative” BusConnects programme, as the Minister of State called it in his reply, transformation means Xpress services are taking 20 to 30 minutes longer than they did. That makes no sense. I ask the Minister of State whether more X1 and X2 services can be provided during the day to equate to what people had prior to the BusConnects roll-out and whether the 84X route can be brought back because it worked very well, unlike this expanded route.

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