I congratulate the Minister of State on his new role and wish him the best in it. Public transport is a key challenge facing the country, but there is a lot of potential there to provide a service that will benefit so many communities across the country, and it is a vital service that we need to invest in and make sure operates properly. Key to any really good, successful public service is reliability. If it is not reliable, it completely undermines the whole system. People and the public have to have trust that a bus will show up when it says it will show up. We have seen the BusConnects programme being rolled out across Dublin and, in particular, I will talk about north Wicklow over recent weeks. This programme has been talked about and promised for a long time. There were quite a number of false starts with it but it was eventually rolled out a number of weeks ago. Unfortunately, when it was rolled out, the provider was not ready for it. GoAhead Ireland was contracted to provide a service under the BusConnects programme, and it was clear that it did not have enough staff or capacity to actually roll this programme out. We had an incredible situation where three, four or five buses in a row were being cancelled on particular routes and there were drivers who did not know where they were meant to be going. People were really frustrated. College kids could not get to college and people were missing interviews. It caused enormous difficulties for people when it should have been a positive addition to the locality. This should have been a positive news story but because Go-Ahead Ireland was not prepared, it completely undermined things and still has not got fully on top of it. I had a meeting with the company. Apparently it did not have enough mechanics, which it is now recruiting. There is a really serious question here about why Go-Ahead Ireland got this service. How was it contracted to provide this service when it is not able to fulfil the most basis terms of service, namely, that a bus shows up when it is timetabled to do so? That is something I would like the Minister of State to examine in his role. If we contract out, those contractors are being paid to do a job and they must be able to do that job. This impacts everybody, but what has been raised with me is the huge problems that are caused for people with disabilities when their buses do not show up. As I said, Go-Ahead Ireland has been contracted to provide this service. I understand a new tender has gone out and I think the company is also to get the new contract. Why is that and how is the Government going to be sure the company is going to be able to fulfil that? Dublin Bus provided the service on many of these routes previously. It was in a much better position to provide this service and it is problematic when we see this privatisation, especially when the private operators are not able to provide the service. I want to ask the Minister of State about this because I have been told a number of other routes are going to be privatised. They are going to be taken from Dublin Bus and given to other operators. One of those routes is in west Wicklow in my constituency: the 65 that goes from Ballymore Eustace through Blessington into Dublin. Can the Minister of State confirm that the 65 route is going to be privatised and can he explain why when we see so many failures with the current privatisation of the system?

Sentiment score: 0.07

I thank the Minister of State. On reliability and improvements, there have been some improvements, but when we are still missing services that is going to hugely impact on the people who require that particular bus. For example, the bus from Newcastle has been frequently dropped. If there are improvements in say, the L3 in Delgany, that is not going to make any difference to the person in Newcastle who needs to get to work. It cannot be the case that there are slight improvements. We must see reliability across the whole system. Every bus that is due must turn up on time when it is meant to turn up and where it is meant to turn up. I raise also the Xpress services. In Greystones we had the 84X Xpress service. It was a very good service that got people from Greystones into town in good time. It was run by Dublin Bus and was reliable. Under the BusConnects programme this is now being covered by the X1 and X2. There are a couple of problems with this. It now takes perhaps half an hour longer for the Xpress service to get to where it needs to go because of the changes, but as well as that the NTA has dropped a number of daytime services so it is now only a rush-hour service. My message to the Minister of State is this: if it is not broken, please do not fix it. The 84X was an excellent service that everyone appreciated. The service should have been expanded rather than being reduced and being made take longer. It is incredible that under the “transformative” BusConnects programme, as the Minister of State called it in his reply, transformation means Xpress services are taking 20 to 30 minutes longer than they did. That makes no sense. I ask the Minister of State whether more X1 and X2 services can be provided during the day to equate to what people had prior to the BusConnects roll-out and whether the 84X route can be brought back because it worked very well, unlike this expanded route.

Sentiment score: 0.13