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Dublin City Council is to suspend the evening bus-gate at College Green for two months, it was announced tonight.

Councillors voted at a meeting tonight by 35 votes to 11 in favour of suspending the busgate from November 18th onwards to cover the Christmas shopping period and January sales.

The moves comes after city manager John Tierney put proposals to the leaders to the council members' political groups last week to end an ongoing dispute over the bus-gate.

Traders in the city centre claim that business had declined 30 per cent since the introduction of the bus-gate in July.

The scheduled six-month review of the bus-gate, which was to take place in January will now be pushed back to June 2010.

The council also agreed tonight to provide 1,380 free on-street car parking spaces from 2pm on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday up to Christmas in the city centre.