The Labour Party welcomes this Bill. A genuine success story of the previous Government was the expansion of public transport services outside of Dublin, the Local Link network in particular. It is important we build upon that progress. This Bill is largely technical but it is important in enabling us to do so. I acknowledge the progress being made but too many people are still forced to rely on their cars to get around because of inadequate public transport options in particular outside the capital. There is a real cost to that from a climate and emissions perspective but also as we have seen recently in terms of our dependence on fossil fuels, the financial impact of the skyrocketing petrol and diesel prices and the huge impact on people's quality of life that comes from sitting for hours every day on congested motorways. It is important we give people other options - cheaper, more sustainable and frankly more enjoyable, more efficient and more productive options to get around. The best way to protect people from the high cost of petrol and diesel is by reducing their dependence on private cars and making public transport a viable alternative for them. That is one reason we in the Labour Party proposed a free public transport pilot for the duration of the present fossil fuel crisis. Our public transport networks need massive upgrades and expansions to build on the good work of the previous Government. My colleagues, Deputies Sheehan, Nash and Eoghan Kenny, will touch on the particulars of their own areas. I hope when BusConnects networks are rolled out in other cities that lessons are learned from our experience in Dublin. It has not exactly been a smooth a smooth ride so far. The roll-out is delayed in places currently due to the Department of Transport holding back funding. The scattered roll-out of the various spines has not helped public buy-in. So many parts of the new network are still missing that what we have at present is just a patchwork of routes that do not always make sense on their own. These new routes are being commenced without the reallocation of road space needed for bus lanes, bus corridors and bus gates which means buses are getting stuck in ever more congestion, journey times are increasing for many people and the core concept of BusConnects, that you hop on and hop off buses in a timely manner to traverse the city, is just not working out yet in reality. I believe it can be done but the slow roll-out and persistent delays undermine public confidence in the project and, indeed, my own confidence. The Department of Transport needs to put its money where its mouth is. MetroLink also urgently needs to be developed. I call again on the Government to honour its commitment in the programme for Government to conduct a new feasibility study on extending the MetroLink out to Dublin south west. In many ways, what BusConnects is trying to achieve is an underground model where people can connect to different lines but just above ground. That model crucially means that buses are given priority on our roads. We hear from the NTA and service operators all the time that congestion is the number one issue affecting reliability for buses. I welcome the work under way putting in new bus lanes and other measures I mentioned but perhaps the cart was put before the horse in rolling out a lot of the new routes before the necessary infrastructure was in place. I see this most obviously with the new F1 route in my constituency, Dublin South-West. I have raised this with the Minister previously and with the NTA. The F1 replaced the 49 bus. It takes a slightly different route down residential roads with no priority bus lanes so it gets stuck in morning and evening traffic. The consequence is a journey into the city centre which previously might have taken 45 minutes during peak hours can now take around one hour and 15 minutes. That has a significant impact on commuters from Tallaght, Firhouse and Knocklyon who rely on the bus to get to work. When I raised this with the Minister previously, he pointed to the Kimmage corridor as a solution. That corridor has planning permission but it will be a few years before it is in operation. In any case, the environmental impact assessment says the corridor will save around seven minutes on the inbound journey in the mornings and three minutes in the evenings. Without further intervention, none of us can really argue that this new route represents an improvement for my constituents. The new route also cuts off direct public transport links with Firhouse, Templeogue and Terenure villages. My constituents do not benefit from the high frequency element because that begins and ends in Kimmage. The fact that it is a cross-city route is causing issues too with the bus frequently packed and standing room only within a couple of stops in the city centre. Deputy Sherlock tells me her constituents in Dublin Central are suffering from similar issues with this new route. I cannot understate the strength of feeling towards the changes in this new route in much of my area. I hosted a packed and impassioned public meeting on this back in March. We have a petition to reinstate the old 49 route to run alongside the F1 to restore these vital community links and improve journey times to the city centre. We have seen really good support for that. I would appreciate if the Minister and the NTA could engage with us further on this. The demand is there. I want to raise an issue that is seemingly becoming more and more common, which is a bit of a scandal - buses skipping stops along particular routes and the reasons this is happening. A number of people have gotten in touch with me about this over the past few months, including someone who used to work for Dublin Bus and has asked drivers about this. It would seem that when buses run behind schedule, central command instructs drivers to skip stops to get back on time and avoid paying penalties, regardless of whether anyone is waiting at the stop or not. That is egregious. I would appreciate if the Minister would respond specifically in relation to this. We all want buses to turn up on time but I think we would also agree that a bus that shows up slightly late is better than one that does not show up at all. People tell me they are frequently left stranded by buses driving past them and ignoring them at bus stops as they wait. Public transport is a public service first and foremost. Of course, bus services need to be commercially viable to some degree but the operator's primary consideration must be serving the people and not just watching its own wallet. We have a situation now where the penalties that the NTA performance metrics - it is important that performance metrics are put in place but it is also important that they do not have adverse impacts - are applying to operators are having the opposite effect. They are supposed to improve reliability but they are making the situation worse. We want to see people using public transport. It is encouraging that we are seeing a greater level of provision outside of Dublin. It is important that we build on that and I reiterate my support for that. We want public transport to be people's preferred mode to the greatest extent possible but one of the biggest barriers to that in Dublin is a perception that our bus services are becoming increasingly unreliable, and we have to nip that in the bud. People need confidence in our public transport to bring about the modal shift that we need to see from an emissions reduction perspective and from a quality of life perspective and we have still plenty of work to do in that regard.

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