Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, for taking this matter. I am disappointed that the Minister for Transport, Deputy Ryan, was not able to make it. I have raised this issue previously, most recently with the Tánaiste in this Chamber in September and at committee meetings last year.

Specifically on the Go-Ahead bus service, my office is inundated with complaints from customers. It is not just the 63, 59, 45A, 111 or 75 routes in Dún Laoghaire; it is Go-Ahead bus services across the greater Dublin area. Just yesterday, for example, the 16.56 and the 17.38 services on the 18 route to Palmerstown were cancelled. On Monday, a woman was left to wait for more than an hour for the 17.05 service on the 175 route, which was cancelled. Another man was left waiting for more than an hour in Kilmacanogue because the 13.10, the 13.30 and the 13.50 bus services to Dún Laoghaire on the 45A route did not show up. When he contacted Go-Ahead, he was told that the 14.13 service was also being cancelled and that he would have to wait until 14.33. That is a wait of more than an hour and a half for a service that is meant to run every 20 minutes. It is completely unacceptable.

I could list a dozen more examples from this week alone. As I said, I am disappointed that the Minister is not here to take this matter. I wonder if he is aware of how bad the Go-Ahead bus service has become and the significant impact this is having on people’s lives, particularly those of his constituents in Dublin Bay South. My Fianna Fáil colleagues across Dublin and I will continue to raise this issue until we see a resolution and an improvement in the Go-Ahead bus service.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Devlin provided a litany of buses that have been cancelled. Thankfully, Go-Ahead only operates one bus in our area, the N6, although many would say that one is enough. It does not seem to be able to fulfil the contract that has been given to it. That is significant. When a person is standing at a bus stop at 7.50 a.m., has to be in work for 9 a.m. and the first time a bus arrives at the stop is at 9.10 a.m. - nearly 55 minutes later - that person is already ten minutes late for work and will arrive in at 9.45 a.m. That is happening on a consistent basis.

The National Transport Authority, NTA, has issued fines to Go-Ahead, LUAS and Dublin Bus, amounting to nearly €5 million. That is welcome to send the signal that it is not acceptable for them to cancel bus services. However, nobody wants to hand out fines to transport companies. We want them to collect their passengers and to be able to deliver the services that they promised to deliver. Go-Ahead promised that it would have a service for local people on the N6 route. It told us its issue is staffing, and I understand that anybody can have staffing concerns. The real difficulty is that the new N6 replaces two previous routes, namely, the N6 and the N4, one which was operated by Dublin Bus and the other by Go-Ahead. The Dublin Bus service powers ahead past the interchange at Finglas village. Meanwhile, there are five or six buses left waiting by Go-Ahead in the middle of Finglas village, where it has located its new canteen. Not only is it not providing the service, it is also blocking up the village. There are many complaints from the local Tidy Towns group, disability activist groups and so on. There cannot be a bus depot in the middle of a village. It is just not safe for pedestrians or cyclists and it is not good for congestion. As I said, I know this is about drivers. However, a company should not tender for service if it is not able to provide it.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I would like to thank Deputies McAuliffe and Devlin for giving me the opportunity to discuss this issue on behalf of the Minister. I understand that the Deputies' questions are in relation to ongoing issues with the provision and reliability of bus services provided in Dublin, in particular those services provided by Go-Ahead Ireland. I further understand that the issue of service reliability with Go-Ahead Ireland routes was previously raised by several Deputies in recent weeks during Topical Issue debates and parliamentary questions.

The Department has responsibility for policy and overall funding in respect of public transport. However, the Department is not involved in the day-to-day operation of public transport services nationally, including those public service obligation, PSO, routes in Dublin currently operated by Go-Ahead Ireland or other operators. It is the NTA that has statutory responsibility for securing the provision of public passenger transport services nationally by way of public transport services contracts and for the allocation of associated funding to the relevant transport operators. As the Deputies know, PSO services are socially necessary but financially unviable services and the PSO programme represents a significant expenditure of taxpayers' money. Currently, the vast majority of PSO bus services are provided by either Dublin Bus or Bus Éireann through what are known as direct award contracts. The remaining routes are operated by Go-Ahead Ireland, which entered the market in September 2018 as part of Government's commitment to open up the bus market through a programme of tendering known as bus market opening.

A key Government objective is to provide all citizens with reliable and realistic sustainable mobility options, and transport plays a key role in delivering this goal. To support this objective, in budget 2022, the Department of Transport secured approximately €538 million of funding for PSO and Local Link services this year. The Department recently secured €563 million in budget 2023 for the continuation of these essential PSO services and for the continuation of both the 20% average fare discount and the young adult card.

In the context of the Deputies' specific questions on ongoing issues with the provision and reliability of bus services provided in Dublin, and in particular those provided by Go-Ahead Ireland, the NTA has advised that the performance of all public transport operators is closely monitored by the authority as part of the contractual arrangements in place between it and the operators.

Go-Ahead Ireland is not alone in experiencing these issues. Many operators in the public transport sector are facing similar challenges with staffing, both because of Covid-19-related absences and with regard to recruiting new drivers. The public transport industry has been particularly hard hit with driver shortages as operators attempt to return to pre-pandemic levels of activity as well as deliver intended service improvements. However, while these staffing issues are being experienced across the system by both commercial and PSO operators, it is also true that Go-Ahead Ireland is experiencing higher than normal levels of Covid-related staff absences that are impacting on service delivery, with a number of services not operating as scheduled.

I understand that the NTA is working closely with bus operators, including Go-Ahead Ireland, to try to mitigate the impact of the driver shortage through extensive driver recruitment campaigns, engagement with the Road Safety Authority, RSA, regarding the testing and licence process of new bus drivers and by working with the operator to minimise service cancellations, ensure first- and last-service buses operate and on low-frequency routes to avoid, where possible, the cancellation of consecutive low-frequency services.

Before coming into the Chamber, I got updated information from the NTA that Go-Ahead has indicated that it will have the adequate number of drivers by December of this year.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for the update, the majority of which was contained in the response I received yesterday from the Department, which is welcome. A parallel I would draw is the issue of Go-Ahead experiencing higher than normal levels of Covid-related staff absences. We wish Covid on nobody but I do not understand how that company seems to have a worse number of cases of Covid than any other operator. It is having a serious impact on commuters. From the Minister's perspective, there is a kind of a hands-off approach to public transport in Dublin in particular, and that is leaving it to the NTA. That approach is not working. I contrast that with the issues during the summer at the Dublin Airport Authority, which the Minister of State herself worked on. That political pressure resolved the issues. Between the NTA and the Department, pressure needs to be applied to ensure we do not wait until Christmas. People have jobs to get to between now and Christmas and they need to get there on time and to have a reliable bus service. It is very important that this is done, and done quickly. Furthermore, if the issues continue in regard to Go-Ahead, I and Fianna Fáil colleagues like Deputy McAuliffe will be back again. People need safe, efficient, high-quality bus transport.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the news that Go-Ahead will have its full complement by Christmas. As I said from the beginning, if a company tendered for a service, it should be in a position to deliver it. In that context, we should not be playing catch-up, particularly where people's lives are concerned. We only have to look at the discrepancy between the number of routes Dublin Bus operates and the number Go-Ahead operates. Dublin Bus received fines of €1.5 million whereas Go-Ahead, with a fraction of the bus services of Dublin Bus, received fines of €850,000. I appreciate that there are staff shortages right across the economy; it is because the economy is growing fast, which is to be welcomed. However, we have to look at what the manpower issues are in the transport industry. We are getting similar concerns from Dublin Bus on the 40 bus route, where buses are again being cancelled. If this is widespread, we are going to have to examine the terms, the conditions and the working environment. Of course, Covid impacts those people on the front line but there is nothing new about that and we have known about it for some time. Operators like Go-Ahead should have done far more far sooner.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies. I will be raising the issues they have raised with the Minister. I want to reassure them that the NTA is engaging regularly with Go-Ahead Ireland and other public transport operators in regard to any service provision issues on the PSO network, and the NTA is providing regular updates to the Department of Transport in regard to these issues. I can also confirm that, as part of the NTA’s contractual performance monitoring system with operators, issues of poor reliability and punctuality performance can result in financial penalties for those operators. As the Deputies referenced, the NTA formally administers sanctions and penalties. The NTA also formally meets with Go-Ahead on a weekly basis to review performance-associated customer feedback and driver recovery plans, and it will continue to closely monitor the situation.

In respect of the specific issues being experienced regarding service reliability, the NTA has advised that it has raised these with Go-Ahead Ireland and will continue to monitor and engage closely with the operator in an effort to improve the situation. As Deputies have noted, penalties were previously applied to Go-Ahead Ireland for quarter 4 of 2021 and quarter 1 of 2022, amounting to €266,968 and €209,188 respectively. Furthermore, public transport operators are forecasting improvements in reliability in the coming months. This will depend on successful recruitment and retention of critical staff, in particular drivers. It is hoped that this will help to resolve the current reliability issues being experienced. I will ask the Minister to keep the Deputies updated in regard to the driver shortage.