Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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179. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to review the Government policy of privatising public transport; to review the contract with GoAhead with a view to returning these routes back to Dublin Bus due to ongoing issues with reliability; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4791/25]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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As Minister for Transport, I have responsibility for policy and overall funding in relation to public transport; however, I am not involved in the day-to-day operations of public transport. The National Transport Authority (NTA) has statutory responsibility for securing the provision of public passenger transport services nationally and for the scheduling and timetabling of these services in conjunction with the relevant transport operators, in this case Go Ahead.

The performance of all public transport operators is monitored by the NTA as part of the contractual arrangements in place between it and the operators. These contractual arrangements allow for not just the monitoring of performance by the NTA and the publication by it of annual performance reports, but importantly, the contracts also allow for the imposition of financial penalties where performance does not meet the required standard.

In light of the NTA’s responsibility in this area, I am meeting the NTA this week and will be discussing this issue with them. We are seeing more people using public transport and we are improving our fleet across the country but commuters need certainty around these services.