DUBLIN BUS has issued a list of the areas where it considers its crews are most vulnerable to attack. They include all routes into Tallaght, Ballyfermot Clondalkin, Ronanstown, Blanchardstown, Ballymun, Finglas and Coolock/Darndale.
The number of staff who reported ill following an assault was 222 in the year to the end of November 1995 compared with 98 in the full year of 1992.
The information was supplied to the Working Party Group established by the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, to consider the problem of assaults on Dublin bus drivers.
Mr Bill McCamley of SIPTU's Dublin Bus branch gave a cautious welcome to the report.
But he claimed that the Minister's direction that no extra resources would be made available - either financially or in Garda manpower - placed very definite limitations on the recommendations the working party could make.
Mr McCamley said it was no criticism of the Garda to say that they could not always give bus workers the degree of cover required - especially in relation to the less serious incidents.
He was disappointed, however, that the report did not recommend a feasibility study into setting up a transport police, as SIPTU had requested.
Mr McCamley also said he regretted that SIPTU could not get the working party's support for extending the designation of peace officer" to bus workers. This would have obliged judges to give people who committed violence on buses "the type of stiff sentencing in keeping with their offences", according to Mr McCamley.
Mr McCamley said SIPTU welcomed the report's conclusion that there was no single panacea for violence against bus drivers.