Alan Farrell (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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63. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his views on proposals to tender out the local and orbital public service obligation bus services currently operated by Dublin Bus; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40789/13]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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73. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the proposals for the tendering out of PSO bus services as proposed by the National Transport Authority.. [40529/13]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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78. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his plans to tender out Bus Éireann routes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40887/13]

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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81. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he believes commuters and regional areas in the commuter belt and greater Dublin area will benefit as a result of the tendering out of particular routes and public service obligation(PSO) routes when the current contract expires; if the next tendering phase will result in a transparent decision making process; if he will outline the ramifications for particular routes in County Wicklow (details supplied) as a result of the competition in public transport in the bus market as proposed by the National Transport Authority; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40790/13]

Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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102. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the proposals for the tendering out of public service obligation bus services as proposed by the National Transport Authority; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40786/13]

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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107. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if local authorities, commuters and residents' associations will have an input in the future design of the Dublin Bus route network; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40433/13]

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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124. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the actions he has taken to investigate the effects of allowing private operators to compete for routes with Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann on overall service and its social obligations.. [40910/13]

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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637. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his plans to privatise Bus Eireann routes in County Louth; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40793/13]

Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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650. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if the liberalising of bus routes will be extended beyond those locations listed in the public consultation document launched recently.. [41111/13]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 63, 73, 78, 81, 102, 107, 124, 637 and 650 together.

These questions relate to the future provision of public service obligation bus services. I refer the Deputies to my response to Priority Question No. 4 today.

Alan Farrell (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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It would be helpful if the Minister’s reply to Question No. 4 was circulated to Members. Although I was listening attentively to it, I cannot recall all of it.

For some years Fine Gael has earmarked the opening up of the bus market and PSOs. As this is contained in the programme for Government, I cannot see how anyone would be particularly surprised by this step. Given that the area in question accounts for only 10% of the market, one could almost say this is a trial of the future tendering of these licences. In the Dublin North constituency there are three bus routes. The most important route is the No. 102, which is an orbital service serving Dublin Airport and Sutton and connects to DART services in Malahide and Sutton. It effectively connects the area with the eastern seaboard. The No. 33A and No. 33B services take in Portrane which is not served by bus routes but is served by train services. The other service being examined is the one that serves the northern Dublin commuter towns of Skerries, Rush and Balbriggan. Is it possible to extend these public service licences to other operators to ensure there is not a stymying of the potential for the extension of routes? Malahide and other towns in the area have been vying for orbital services for many years and the National Transport Authority has stood in their way.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I am aware of one licence application for a feeder service to Malahide DART station which was refused by the NTA. Generally, if there is an existing publicly subvented service, the NTA will not permit another operator to compete with that service. The view is taken that if the service is necessary and socially desirable but not profitable, it is subvented. If another operator were to come in, it could undermine the subvention. It is an imperfect arrangement. Much as we would love to believe the transport planners know everything and get it right, they do not always and people do not behave the way computer models say they are supposed to.

The public consultation began on 11 September. The current contracts for the Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann services in question were supposed to expire at the end of 2014, but the NTA is proposing to extend them for a further two years when it will tender some of them.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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This is just another way of talking about privatisation if an adequate subsidy is not given to the public transport provider. Historically, even before the Government took office, we have not given adequate subsidies to public transport services. The cuts the Minister is imposing on the subvention will force the privatisation of bus services and the degrading of public transport services. We have one of the lowest public transport subsidies anywhere in Europe. All other European countries give a higher subvention to public transport services by a wider mile than we do. They understand it is a necessary and vital infrastructure for moving people around, as well as being a public service.

The consequence is that Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann are under pressure to discontinue or significantly downgrade unprofitable routes. The private sector is interested only in cherrypicking the most profitable routes. It is not the way forward. We in Dún Laoghaire have learned, to our cost, with the loss of many bus services as we pushed towards privatisation, that it is not working.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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When one makes comparisons it is important to compare like with like. Public transport systems that have underground elements to them, such as the Paris Metro or the London Underground, must have more subvention because running underground is so expensive. Had we been able to go down the route of running underground systems, much more subvention would have been required.

One must bear in mind that when we discuss subvention in Ireland we refer only to the public service obligation, PSO, element of it. On top of that there are capital grants. Therefore comparisons between subvention in Dublin or the rest of Ireland with that in other countries is very often inaccurate because it includes only part of our subsidy. We also give very large capital grants to Irish Rail, Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann which are not included in the subvention figures. It is important to compare like with like. Tendering includes a subvention. That is the point of tendering with PSO. The companies tendering for a contract are asked to provide as good a service as possible for the amount of money available.

Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I congratulate the Minister on grasping the nettle on this proposal to open up the bus market. It has been in the pot for a very long time and I am very pleased to see it come to the boil at last, albeit in a more limited way than I would like. For that reason I regret it is happening when the market is contracting. It would have been so much easier if this had happened ten years ago when the demand for transport was expanding. As a result of that the bundle of networks is limited in the initial stage. Are the new contracts envisaged as a pilot scheme to test the proposition that the competitive tendering process will give us a service that is cheaper, more efficient and better for the consumer and taxpayer? Some people have expressed concern about it in other areas but of the kind of model envisaged here, London is the nearest one. I am very familiar with the services there. Competitive tendering has been hugely successful and the demand for travel has almost doubled on the London buses.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I note the Deputy's comments and in her previous role as transport spokesperson and a member of the transport committee she took a very active interest in this area. The NTMA's proposal is to tender out some contracts from the end of 2016, although they would have to be awarded some time before that. They would run for five years until 2021. I cannot look into a crystal ball and say what will happen beyond that. Many things can change in the world between now and then. We should not assume that the contracts will go to non-State operators. It is open to Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann to tender for those contracts. Private operators I have met always say they can provide a better service for the same price. Most of us will have met them and the groups which represent them. This is an opportunity to test them out, call their bluff and see if that is the case.

Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)
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I listened to the Minister's earlier response to Deputy Dooley's priority question on this subject. Had the Minister's Government had a majority, we would be heading down a serious route of privatisation, much further then we are going. The Minister has made it very clear that he and his party are in favour of privatisation of the bus services. The incremental privatisation has already started. We are now talking about a further 10% on top of the privatisation that has already taken place across the services.

I do not know what the Minister's Labour Party colleagues are doing to stop this, but it is clear that many of these private companies will cherry-pick the services they will provide. They have already done so with some services to parts of the country. Cherry-picking will take place and we will not get a better service. I do not accept for a minute that anybody can believe we will get a better bus service if services are privatised.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The model proposed by the NTA, which is very similar to the Transport for London model, does not allow for cherry-picking. These are publicly subvented services and there is no competition. Once they exist, the operators are given a bundle of routes and are effectively given a subvented monopoly on those routes. This does not allow for cherry-picking. One could argue that currently around the country, in the inter-city market where there is significant competition, private operators are going in where they think they can make the most money. This happens where there are three or four companies on the same route. This is something very different: the NTA identifies a bundle of routes and decides there can be only one operator on those routes. Therefore, cherry-picking is not an option under this model.

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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I am mostly in favour of tendering for the PSO bus services, particularly where it leads to better services and a cheaper cost to the State. If one wants to call that privatisation, that is fine, but there is no need to mislead the people. These operators are still operating public routes and a public service.

To endorse Deputy Olivia Mitchell's comments, I would like to clarify what the Minister meant when he said "until 2021". Did he mean it was only 10% of the PSO market until 2021, or will we see further percentages and further routes being put up for tender before that date?

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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As I mentioned earlier, this is a determination to be made by the NTA. The current proposal is that approximately 10% of routes will be tendered, with that contract coming into force at the end of 2016. I cannot predict what will happen beyond that or beyond 2021.

Alan Farrell (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for his responses to the supplementary questions. The timing of the tendering of the PSO for Dublin Bus route 102 is difficult, given the services now about to launch in Malahide, which are starting on 29 October. If we see another private operator enter the market on the same route or part of the route, what effect will that have on the most recently awarded licence? The Minister has said the private operators will be unable to cherry-pick. However, if additional routes spring up, passengers may use these services because of the increased capacity and level of service provided by these private operators, who may undercut the market with reduced fares. Is it possible that could happen?

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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This may not be an answer to the Deputy's question, but the whole objective of public transport policy is to ensure that more people have access to and use public transport than currently. We have seen some very good success stories and have seen examples of where things have not worked very well in this country. The most obvious example is the Luas, which requires no operating subvention. It will carry over 30 million passengers this year, more than Irish Rail and our airports, State and regional, combined. There are great success stories, but other attempts have not been so successful. However, the objective must always be to ensure that more people have access to public transport, that it works well and that the numbers using it increase. I do not believe people are all that bothered about who operates it. People in here may be concerned, but the average passenger is not. Nobody has ever told me he or she is annoyed that the Luas is not run by a State company. People are happy with the service. Nobody has said the reverse either in the context of Bus Éireann or Dublin Bus.

Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister must never have met the unions so.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Luas cost us a lot of money initially.

There were massive overruns precisely because of private companies extorting the process. I agree the Luas is a success, so why should the benefits not come back directly to us? I do not see why we should outsource or privatise it. From my experience with the 46A in Dún Laoghaire I know a game is played whereby people state more people access a service because services have been rationalised. Elderly people and particular communities lost services provided by other small bus routes to expand the service in the more profitable areas where more customers could be found. It should not be either-or; it should not be that we increase numbers at the expense of losing small bus services to little rural areas, or particular estates or communities. It should be both and this will not happen where the model moves towards privatisation. It will all be about where we can get the biggest numbers and pack the buses the most and not providing a service where there may not be as many passengers but where it is vitally needed by those communities or transport users.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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In part I agree with the Deputy. The objective is to increase the number of people using public transport overall and not to displace them from one bus route to another. Nothing is achieved by this. On this point I certainly agree with the Deputy. To clarify, the Luas is not profitable but it covers its own operating costs and does not require an operating subvention. The fares cover its operating costs fully which is a considerable achievement for a light railway. The other service mentioned by the Deputy, the 46A, does not do so. Despite the fact it is a high-frequency bus route used by many people who pay their fares it loses money and there is a problem in this regard.