Dublin Bus not moving fast enough on reforms, says TD

DUBLIN BUS management has been criticised by a Government backbencher. Ciaran Cuffe (Green Party, Dún Laoghaire) said his party’s message was that Dublin Bus needed radical reform.

“The funding increased marginally last year, but Dublin Bus faces a crisis of reduced passenger numbers, fewer people working and shopping.

“To respond to that crisis, it needs to reform itself radically and within a matter of months. I am not convinced that senior management in Dublin Bus is moving fast or far enough to make these changes happen.’’

Mr Cuffe said Dublin Bus needed to do more work to meet the needs of the travelling public in the 21st century. Above all, the Dublin Bus brand needed to be renewed to attract more people on to the buses.

“There was a period during the height of the economic boom when Dublin Bus attracted many new users, such as people from the immigrant population who came here to work, but in recent months buses are carrying fewer people and, therefore, have less income.”

Mr Cuffe was speaking during a debate on the Deloitte review of Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann.

Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey recalled he had commissioned the review last year to assist in deciding on the funding to be allocated to the two State bus companies and to provide reassurance to the Government and the taxpayer that they were operating efficiently and effectively.

Mr Dempsey said since commissioning the report, the financial position of both companies had deteriorated significantly.

Despite an increase in the exchequer subvention to €313 million, and a fare increase of 10 per cent, the CIÉ group was facing a projected operating loss this year of up to €100 million.

He said the report found that the Dublin Bus network had not been realigned for a number of years and, as a result, had become overly complex, with a significant amount of service duplication.

Mr Dempsey said the report’s headline recommendations were that Dublin bus services should be improved through redesign of the network to provide a similar or better level of service at a lower cost.

This could be done principally by simplifying the network, eliminating duplication of services, providing additional direct routes in and out of the city and to key employment centres, and improving scheduling effectiveness and bus priority.

Fine Gael spokesman Fergus O’Dowd said 10 years ago the Department of the Taoiseach had published a document on reforming the bus market in Dublin, clearly setting out the need for competition.

“Ten years later, that report continues to gather dust in the Department of Transport and nothing has changed.’’

Labour spokeswoman Róisín Shortall said the scale of the cutbacks proposed for Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann represented an unprecedented attack on public transport services and structures.