Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 8:

In page 14, subsection (1), between lines 37 and 38, to insert the following:

"(e) provide and issue licenses under the Road Transport Act 1932 for public transport operators operating within the GDA.".

This is one of the most important issues related to this legislation. The amount of power this organisation will have for dealing with transport strategy and needs in Dublin will be immense. If I look at the amount of time we have spent during my short time in this House talking about organisations such as the HSE or the NRA a number of themes consistently emerge. The first theme is the lack of accountability such organisations have to Members of this House. The second theme is the non-existence of a role for elected politicians in any of these organisations. There would be much consensus among different Members on these points on accountability and the role of politicians. The third issue, which this amendment is about, is the need for competition. There will probably be much less unanimity on this point than on the other two points I have made. I will still press the amendment as it is very important to commuters in Dublin and their needs.

I propose this amendment on two grounds. The first is a very practical point. Reports that have been done on the transport needs of the greater Dublin area, whether work by the Dublin Transportation Office or the more recent draft report produced by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport which is in circulation in the media, point to the fact that an additional 350 buses are needed for the Dublin area. They also point to the fact that bus investment has been the loser in the capital investment decisions by this Government over the last number of years. Investment has gone to projects such as the Luas and metro. Despite this, bus transport is still the most popular form of transport in the area about which we are talking. The organisation that provides it, Dublin Bus, does not have Government funding to provide the additional 350 buses, at a minimum, that will be needed to deal with commuting issues in the Dublin area.

My second reason for proposing this amendment is more policy driven than the first. I strongly believe competition is needed to meet the transport issues we are dealing with. We have much bus capacity directly funded by the taxpayer. That is a good thing and should stay, although it will go out to tender based on EU law. However, the best way to ensure that capacity is well used and taxpayers' money is well spent is if the people who are spending that money and providing that service know there is an alternative out there for the passenger to use and that it is feasible that if they do not do their job well, that job will be given to somebody else. It is important we clarify that the Dublin transport authority has a role to play in introducing and leading greater competition in the bus market in the Dublin area for the policy rationale I have outlined and also on the practical grounds that the money to meet the pressing needs of Dublin's commuters does not and will not come from the Exchequer.

In making this point I do not propose complete deregulation of the bus market. I lived in London for many years and saw the mess made of the bus market there because of the decision to completely deregulate and hand it over to a number of competing companies. However, there are other models, as the Minister is aware, that allow the private sector to play a role in providing bus services in line with a public sector that also provides services. I cannot see why this organisation should not have the power to say it wants to provide new radial routes for the greater Dublin area — routes that go around the city as opposed to linear ones that go through it — and allow the private sector to put a case on why it can provide that service well. It could ask Dublin Bus to do the same and if the private sector can do a better job, it should hand that business over.

Many services in operation are provided by the private sector — the Swords route is the one with which people are most familiar. There are also services near Dublin Airport which operate in a kind of limbo as we wait for the legislation on the Road Transport Act 1932 to be cleared up. I would like this legislation to be amended to state that competition has a role to play in providing additional services and ensuring taxpayers' money is well spent.

Competition is the spur that will deliver this as opposed to the Minister, as he is doing, commissioning a report to see how taxpayers' money is being spent through Dublin Bus and other organisations. We cannot have a model that means every couple of years we commission another centralised report to see how this money is being spent. We need to allow the dynamic forces of competition to operate within a regulated model to ensure the taxpayers' money is well spent and that Dublin commuters get good, new services and better use of existing ones.