Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I second amendment No. 3.

In regard to amendment No. 4, on which Senator Ryan has spoken, I agreed earlier with the objective of creating a regulated and sustainably competitive market, to which this amendment refers, but the intent driving my support for an amendment such as this is radically different, I suspect, from that of Senator Ryan. I have two reasons for opposing this Bill, the second of which I will deal with later. Section 52 of the Dublin Transport Authority Act 2008, to which this Bill relates, has too much influence and still does not create the diversity and competition that is needed.

When preparing for this debate, I checked what the Minister of State, Deputy Killeen, said in response to Committee Stage amendments last week. He acknowledged that section 52 is a pivotal section of the 2008 Act and outlined why that is the case. He said it provides for the continued provision of existing public bus and rail passenger services. He went on to say that "To facilitate the making of the contracts in respect of the public bus services, the section [section 52 of the 2008 Act] establishes that Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann have exclusive rights to continue to operate their current funded services, subject to the granting of bus licences under the Road Transport Act 1932 and future legislative changes". My simple question is why are we not using this Bill to make those legislative changes now?

Senator Ross referred on the Order of Business to a report that was discussed over the weekend. He made the point that public transport providers in Ireland receive approximately €300 million of taxpayers' money. We do not have such money any more. We are borrowing €400 million per week. That is the reality with which we are battling. Why are we not using the opportunity presented by this Bill to ensure that as much value as possible is extracted from the money that is being spent? People who want to enter this market should be allowed to do so as quickly as possible and in a regulated manner to ensure that people who provide routes that are socially important are not the subject of practice that is not acceptable. We must ensure that an environment is created to allow people who have good ideas to compete for tenders that otherwise would be exclusively awarded to one company.

We were told last week that all of this is subject to future legislative changes. We have been operating on the basis of the 1932 Act for 77 years. Why are we not using the opportunity presented by this Bill to create a truly competitive and regulated environment?

When I was preparing for the Second Stage debate on this Bill, I checked the approach being taken by Transport for London. I pointed out to the Minister on Second Stage that it is producing reliability figures every quarter on how its different operators are performing, how many miles they are losing, if they are performing on time and if they are delivering on their contracts. We are a long way from having a similar environment here. The reason that environment is in place in London is that other operators want the business and are trying to get it. Why are we not using this Bill to move to that kind of environment where there is genuine competition and regulation, which ensures that operators deliver the best possible value for taxpayers' money?