Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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82. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if his Department has examined international best practice in public transport app design; if lessons from other jurisdictions are being considered in the digital strategy for TFI; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [63379/25]

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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Has the Department examined international best practice in public transport app design? Are lessons from other jurisdictions are being considered in the digital strategy for TFI?

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy O'Connell for taking this question. I thank her for the question. Like her, I am eager to see best practice being implemented across our public transport sector, including passenger technology. As we heard from Deputy O’Connell and from Deputy Currie earlier, it is a very important matter. Public transport apps are not simply about having a technological solution for the sake of it. Rather, they are about having information available to people so that they can make the best use of our public transport system, especially those who may be new to it or have difficulty finding the best way of making their journey. It is also about having the confidence and that piece around reliability.

The NTA is responsible for several mobile applications, including the TFI Leap Top-Up; the TFI Go mobile ticketing app; TFI Anseo demand-responsive application; and the TFI Live mobile application, which are used for journey planning and for the provision of real-time information to customers.

In all cases, the NTA works extensively with the supplier to deliver the best possible result.

The NTA has collaborated with other public transport authorities on an app design. As an example, the NTA has worked closely with Transport for Scotland on a redesign of TFI Live. Unfortunately, progress has been slower than anticipated because of a lack of mobile application development capacity with the source supplier. While the TFI Live application does function and does present journey planning and real-time data to customers, the NTA is currently investigating options to expedite improvements to the application to improve the customer experience.

One project that will produce improved quality journey data to the TFI Live app is next generation automatic vehicle location, AVL, which replaces five old automatic vehicle location systems with a new centralised solution, to provide higher quality and consistent data outputs to the TFI Live mobile app. This project is going to pilot in March 2026, with the full roll-out taking approximately 12-18 months, which I look forward to seeing happening. I will conclude by saying that people often express their frustration to me about the performance of the app. It is something we need to improve on and work with Members of the House to see this delivered.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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The Minister of State highlighted some of the issues. Deputy Currie also highlighted the issue of ghost buses and the unreliability of the app. Deputy Timmins also highlighted this issue as well. It is also very frustrating that there is not one single accessible platform. There are effectively five different apps that people might find themselves having to interact with to plan their journey. There is the journey planner, a taxi driver database and the Leap top-up. It is really extraordinarily complicated, particularly for someone who is new to it or not digitally savvy, for whatever reason. Addressing this type of issue really needs to be important if we are going to encourage people to rely on public transport and give up their car and move to public transport. Even if it is only part of their journey and they do use other forms of transportation, if that part of the journey becomes unreliable, and people cannot rely on or navigate the apps, all of these things will be barriers to trying to get these transformations and modal shifts.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy makes a very good point in the context of that one platform. The NTA has responsibility for the planning and development of public transport infrastructure, including the development of the related technological systems. As I said earlier, the NTA has awarded a contract to implement and support a national automatic vehicle location system for all public service obligation buses to Trapeze, which is a specialist transport systems company. It is envisaged the work being done will enable the NTA to consolidate several existing and disparate bus AVL systems into one central system to be used by all PSO bus operators in Ireland. It has expansion capacity to meet the growing demand for public transport in Ireland. The point being made is that we all need to live up to the ambition to make it easier for people to use the app and mobile applications. The Deputy is right. It would be great if we had one platform. The point I need to work more on with the Department is in the context of whether this can be done and, if so, when we can do it. I will take the Deputy's points back and I thank her for raising the matter.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I am delighted to hear the comments are being taken on board. At the moment, we expect we might have to hop off a bus and onto a Luas or a DART, but we have to hop between applications as well to do it. This is not something that makes it easy for people to use our public transportation network. I appreciate the Minister of State's comments about the regional providers as well and that he is looking to include them more in terms of an overall bus network so we are not hopping between different apps. From the users' perspective, they believe there should all be one seamless process and they should not have to try to figure out who is providing which service to know how to access it. I welcome the Minister of State's comments and look forward to developments on this matter.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)
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The point that Deputy O'Connell has made in terms of the users' perspective is one we must listen to and recognise. The Members tonight have expressed frustration in terms of ghost buses, lack of real-time information, no buses turning up at all and being late or leaving early. It is an issue we need to have further engagement on by the NTA, with Trapeze and the Department, in the context of how we can make it easy for the travelling public to have an application that functions and that enhances rather than acting as a barrier to their journey planning and usage in respect of the provision of real-time information to the customer. It is the customers who are important, and I thank Deputy O'Connell for representing them tonight. The NTA is currently investigating options to expedite improvements to the application to improve the customer experience. I will bring the comments from Deputy O'Connell and other Members of the House back, and, hopefully, we will see improved quality for the travelling public as a consequence of tonight's questions.