2026-04-22

Delivering an efficient and accessible public transport system is essential to the daily lives of working people across Dublin city and to meeting our climate objectives. The case for public transport speaks for itself. Every single full bus takes 80 cars off the roads, reducing emissions by over 90% and freeing up 300 m of roadway. Week after week, however, I hear from northsiders that they have simply given up taking the bus, not because they do not want to use it but because they cannot afford to trust it. They cannot rely on it daily. Citizens are experiencing frequent no-shows, last-minute cancellations and long gaps between buses. We still hear on an ongoing basis of ghost buses, services that appear as due on the TFI Live app and on the displays but never arrive. How can we expect commuters to shift to public transport when they are plagued by issues every day? I have spoken about this in the Chamber before, but this situation has become so commonplace in Baile Átha Cliath that a website called buscancellationsdublin.eu has started pulling together the data on cancelled buses. In any other sector or walk of life, this would not be acceptable. Northsiders are just trying to get on with their daily lives, yet they are being let down time and again by Dublin Bus and the National Transport Authority, NTA. The delays cause real distress. People are missing work and medical appointments and struggling to get to childcare commitments. I understand from the CEO of Dublin Bus, Billy Hann, that a new next generation automatic vehicle location, NGAVL, system will be piloted in September. This cannot come soon enough, and I really welcome it. As Mr. Hann has acknowledged, the title “real-time passenger information” is effectively misleading, as the system now is just a countdown from when the bus leaves the depot, with no ability to respond to what happens en route to the bus stop. The next generation AVL system must provide passengers with the reassurance they need and deserve while waiting for a public transport service. The long list of issues I hear concerning the 73, 130 and 15 bus routes in my constituency are underpinned by the simple fact that commuters cannot trust that their bus will even show up. When a service is delayed or full, that is frustrating, but when it does not show up at all, with no explanation and no update, that really undermines public confidence in the system and in public transport as a whole. We cannot settle for this standard of service that people have been forced to tolerate in the last few years. This is even more relevant in the current climate and in the current energy crisis, with the pressure on fuels. It is an opportunity, at one level, to get people out of cars and onto public transport. If we are serious about our climate targets and about building a country where an carr a fhágáil sa bhaile is a genuine choice rather than a gamble, then public transport must be reliable enough from the first minute in the morning to the last minute at night.

I thank the Deputy very much. I welcome his question, which is on an issue that is very topical at the moment. He is right that we need to give people confidence in the public transport system so they will continue to use it for all the very good reasons he spoke about. We are strongly committed in the Government to providing all citizens with reliable and sustainable mobility options, and public transport plays a key role in the delivery of this goal. To support this objective, in budget 2026, the Department of Transport secured €940 million in funding for the public service obligation, PSO, and Transport for Ireland, TFI, Local Link services, and a further €980 million in public transport capital investment. Despite this investment, I know that customers can and do encounter issues concerning service cancellations and reliability. Bus cancellations can occur for a variety of reasons, such as issues with the availability of drivers and mechanics causing services not to run to schedule. The NTA has assured me that it is acutely aware of the importance of good-quality information being made available to customers regarding bus departure times and on-street displays. The TFI Live app aims to provide this information. The real-time information displayed on the TFI Live app and on the on-street signs is provided directly by the bus operator responsible for operating the service. The onus is on the transport operator to provide live disruption information if, for unforeseen circumstances, a bus is unable to complete part of its schedule. This information can be relayed to customers using the on-street displays and the TFI Live app. The NTA holds weekly meetings with operators to discuss performance, understand challenges and identify where improvements can be made. In instances where performance drops, financial penalties are rigorously applied. Where a bus does not operate due to circumstances within the operator’s control, a reduction is made in the amount due to the operator equivalent to the cost of operating the cancelled service. The contracts also provide for deductions to be made when punctuality and reliability targets are not met. In relation to the specific issue of vehicle location and tracking information, the NTA awarded Trapeze ITS the contract to develop and implement a next generation automatic vehicle location system for Ireland’s public transport buses. This centralised system will replace the existing fragmented automatic vehicle location systems and will offer better real-time information for passengers. It will enable two-way communication with drivers and monitor the performance of buses against their schedules. The system will also provide tools for service controllers to make interventions, such as curtailment or cancellation of services, and, importantly for customers, will generate the real-time passenger information used in information displays for the public. The next generation automatic vehicle location system project is a centralised, more modern, cloud-based AVL solution to be used by all PSO operators. It consolidates the existing five systems, which are up to 15 years old. This will bring advantages in terms of consistency of data across the operators. The system will be more robust and will have more modern bus control features that will assist bus operators to run services against schedule, providing accurate and reliable data for passengers on real-time displays. The first implementation of this new system in Waterford is due to go live in June and is currently in testing. The system will be rolled out to other operators during the course of 2026 and 2027, including Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann and Go-Ahead Ireland services.

Go raibh maith agat. I welcome the confirmation that the NTA is taking the issue seriously and progressing plans to modernise the existing system. I welcome the fact it looks at it weekly and has a structure in place in this regard. One thing that does concern me is that at the moment we are very reliant on the operators to share data and to push it into the system. I hope that in the new setup that will happen automatically, rather than there being a reliance on various operators to release data into the system. As much of that process as possible should be automated so that the end user is getting the data without even having to think about it and without having any dependency on an operator, whoever it is. The 73 bus service, which I mentioned earlier, was originally the 123 Imp service. These were smaller yellow and red buses that used to run in and out of the city centre. It was a hugely popular service on the north side. The NTA took a decision to give it to a new operator and rename it the 73 in the autumn of last year. There are ongoing issues with that service. We are awaiting detailed information on the performance of the route from the NTA since early March. We have clarified what we are looking for but we are still waiting for that information. This service is a vital one for that part of the north side. I want to keep it on the agenda until the service works for local citizens. I ask that the Minister of State give the NTA a nudge to publish that information and get it back to us.

I will go back to the NTA regarding the 73 bus service to seek the clarification the Deputy requires. There is no doubt about that. Further to the updates I provided earlier on the next generation automatic vehicle location system and practices by the NTA and bus operators to support a better real-time information system for passengers, I note that a number of actions have been taken that will help to address this issue. These actions include the replacement of older antennas on buses, with close to 800 to be replaced. GPS receiver boards on Dublin Bus services are in the process of being updated, with 300 buses updated to date and the balance to be updated in May of this year. Operational practice has also been modified to help address the issue. The NTA has developed a tool that can be used by Dublin Bus and Go-Ahead Ireland to monitor the efficiency of trip cancellation processes. This will help ensure real-time passenger information takes account of all cancellations as they arise. Finally, as I noted in my opening statement, the new system is planned to go ahead in Waterford in June and the roll-out to the other areas will be taking effect straight away after that, in the rest of 2026 into 2027. It will consolidate the five existing systems, some of which are 15 years old, into one central one. This will bring advantages in terms of consistency of the data that people will get from across all the operators. The system will be robust with more modern bus-control features that will assist the bus operators to run services against schedule and provide accurate and reliable data for passengers on real-time displays. If we have the system correct, the information will be live and people will know. We invest a huge amount of money in public transport but we want to make sure we are generating the confidence in the public so that they can use it.