Dublin Bus accused of choosing 'soft option' over loss of 290 jobs

DUBLIN BUS has been accused of choosing “the soft option in letting 290 people go” by the chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Frank Fahey.

Mr Fahey also accused the companies of shirking innovation and reform and being responsible for a disappointing failure to get people to switch from cars to buses.

Mr Fahey made his comments directly to chief executives Joe Meagher for Dublin Bus and Tim Smith for Bus Éireann when they made presentations on their trading difficulties and proposed remedial actions before the Oireachtas committee yesterday.

However, Mr Meagher refuted the claims, arguing the company achieved higher levels of bus occupancy than other European bus fleets, while receiving the lowest levels of public service subsidy in Europe.

Mr Meagher confirmed Dublin Bus was seeking 290 redundancies and would downsize its fleet by 10 per cent or about 100 buses. He said the company would be meeting the unions on the plan next week as failure to control costs would result in losses projected at €31.5 million for this year.

Mr Smith said Bus Éireann was in a similar trading difficulty due to a shortfall in passenger numbers and was seeking 320 job losses and a reduction of 150 buses. This was in a bid to stave off losses projected at up to €30 million this year. Mr Fahey said he accepted it was difficult to justify keeping buses running, particularly in rural areas, when there was no take-up of the service. But, he argued, progress should have been more rapid on issues which would encourage people to switch from private cars.

These included integrated ticketing, a review of the network and bus priority measures in traffic.

But Mr Meagher said Dublin Bus was working on many of these projects, such as real time bus information systems, web and mobile phone-based journey planners and smart cards, and had given out free tickets to households where uptake of the bus service needed encouragement. He said that benchmarked against other European bus companies, and he criticised politicians who, he said, were among the first objectors when the company wished to reorganise the bus network.

While he did not want to reveal the routes where services would be cut, he said there was no point in competing for routes with Luas.

Mr Smith told the committee Bus Éireann would also be seeking cuts in services, but would be hoping to achieve reduced frequencies rather than cuts of routes.

The meeting also heard general secretary of the National Bus and Rail Workers Union Michael Faherty and Siptu organiser Andrew McCarthy strongly criticise what they said were the low levels of subsidy given to the State bus companies.