Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State for staying with us to this relatively late hour tonight. I want to raise some issues that have arisen on certain bus routes that serve my constituency. Some routes are new and others have been in place for a while. I am a big supporter of the BusConnects project. The aim of improving connectivity across our city is very important. I have been on the record for years locally, and now here in the Dáil, as a staunch defender of BusConnects. It is precisely because of this support that it is important we address issues as they arise. I want BusConnects to work for people, so it is important that we listen to them, take their feedback on board and find workable solutions.

Unfortunately, I have had loads of constituents contact me again in the last few weeks about their own bus disconnect issues. I will touch on the problems we are seeing on the S routes first, which include the S4, the S6 and the S8 through my area. These routes were rolled out in November 2023. They have been plagued with issues ever since. It was particularly bad at the beginning of this year, and in the last couple of weeks, unfortunately, the same issues we had at the start of the year have started to rear their heads again, with ghost buses, cancellations and delays.

I was listening to the questions the Minister of State took earlier and I know that other Members have raised these issues with him also. The excuse given earlier this year was that the operator of these routes, which is Go-Ahead, was short on mechanics, and I understood that new mechanics were taken on afterwards. The service did improve but now I need to know why the same problems have started to creep back in again. We need to nip it in the bud. We should not have people accepting that, every few months, there will be a period when the bus they rely on to get to work, school or wherever becomes as unreliable as a chocolate teapot for a period of time. The S4 and S6 serve UCD. Again, numerous students have been on to me over the last few weeks telling me they are missing lectures because the bus just never turned up or a series of buses in a row did not turn up. It is noteworthy that these routes are run by Go-Ahead. I have never been particularly comfortable with the privatisation of our bus routes and the level of service on Go-Ahead routes in general has left a lot to be desired.

I will refer directly to what one of my constituents wrote because she really hit the nail on the head. She emailed me and said it was easy to collect public contracts and revenue while leaving commuters stranded but far harder to uphold the social responsibility that came with providing essential transport to an entire region. She said that when profit took precedence over quality and maintenance, the result was precisely what passengers of the S8 endured daily, with disruption, uncertainty and disregard.

The other bus route I want to raise is the new F spine and particularly the F1 route. Since its launch in mid-October, it has faced a lot of the same issues. I have raised this with the NTA and it has held its hands up a little bit and explained there were teething issues, as we would expect with new routes, and issues with traffic light sequences. Regarding this route, constituents have been raising with me that there are longer journey times as a result of the new route, particularly from Tallaght and Firhouse. Some people find it is taking them half an hour longer on the new F route than it would have taken them to get into town on the previous 49 bus route.

It seems to me that the main issue is the fact the new route has been diverted onto residential roads, which have high levels of traffic congestion and do not have dedicated bus lanes. I am not suggesting the entire route be redrawn but I hope the Minister and the NTA will take onboard the feedback from transport users in my area. There may be a case to make that there is sufficient demand for an additional route that may more closely follow the old 49 route.

Ultimately, I want BusConnects to work but people need reliable and efficient services. We cannot allow a situation to arise where people get into their cars again because they do not have confidence in our public transport.

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