Bus Services Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-16 ============================================================ Evanne Ní Chuilinn (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach I thank the Minister of State for being here to take this Commencement matter on behalf of the Minister for Transport, Deputy O'Brien. It is good timing. We have another set of residents of Chapelizod and other parts of Dublin protesting outside Leinster House today. The Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, agreed with Deputy Cummins last Thursday in the Dáil that they should not have to, but I will tell the Minister of State why they are here again today. Hopefully, we can get to the bottom of it and get some movement on this No. 80 bus. I raise the significant challenges the Chapelizod, Islandbridge and south Palmerstown communities have faced with the new No. 80 bus, which came into operation in October. It is now the only route serving Chapelizod village, having replaced the No. 26 in October. It crosses the Liffey at Bridge Street, travels south along South Great George's Street to Rathmines and terminates at Palmerston Park in Dartry. The new route significantly limits connection to the city centre and is a downgrade on the connectivity offered by the No. 26. The No. 26 service went straight into town. It went straight into the city centre, down along the quays and stopped at Merrion Square. It provided the community in Chapelizod with a dedicated direct link to town, a connection to Heuston Station, both Luas lines and a short walk to the DART as well. It did have some reliability issues, but it serviced the community's needs, providing access to and from the city with only - and this is crucial - a 2% cancellation rate. To reach the city centre, Chapelizod residents now have to transfer buses at Arran Quay where the C spine and other buses travelling along the quays are already full at peak commuting times, or try to squeeze onto the Luas at Smithfield which, as the Minister of State can imagine, is also full by the time it gets in there, or they can get off on South Great George's Street and walk into the city centre. To make matters worse, not only does the No. 80 not bring them directly to the city centre, it also has one of the highest cancellation rates of all buses in the city, at 9.3% since its introduction in October. While some may think this is because it is a new route and that it will surely improve with time, it has not. Since the start of December, 10.5% of buses on the No. 80 service have been cancelled, while 11.4% of buses on the route were cancelled last week. This includes the unacceptable case of last Thursday, which saw six cancellations from town back to Chapelizod between 4.20 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. and seven back-to-back cancellations the other way, from Liffey Valley. From the beginning of this year until the No. 26 service ceased operating on October 17, it was cancelled 799 times. The No. 26 was cancelled that many times between January and October. Since its introduction, the No. 80 service has been cancelled 831 times. That is 14 times per day. The No. 80 has been cancelled on more occasions in two months than the No. 26 was in ten months. This is according to the National Transport Authority's, NTA's, open-source data. Acknowledging that the No. 80 service got off to a rocky start, as the NTA described it, it organised a meeting with public representatives to discuss a proposal to merge the No. 80 route with the No. 130 service that serves Clontarf and Talbot Street. This meeting appeared out of thin air, with no consultation with public representatives or, more importantly, the community. This proposed solution would not provide Chapelizod residents with the direct, dedicated link to the city centre that they need. It will instead add further strain and demand to an already broken route. While it would enhance connectivity to the city centre, it would in fact also extend the overall route of the existing No. 80 service from 17 km to 24 km, which is just going to add more delays and more cancellations. One welcome development is that the NTA has made a commitment to expedite construction of the bus stops on the bypass, but, again, we need to make sure it will engage with public representatives for the area and the community to make sure we know what the design of this infrastructure will be and when it will be delivered. I also had communication this morning with a group of residents in Chapelizod who are worried about their kids getting to school in Lucan. We need to look at getting that bus service back to Lucan instead of Liffey Valley. I call on the NTA to abandon this ill-thought proposal of merging the No. 80 route with No. 130 service, which will cause lots of harm, with communities not being able to get buses to and from town. I also call on it to reinstate the No. 26 route with a terminus at Lucan rather than at Liffey Valley. That is something I called for at that meeting with public representatives last month. BusConnects should enhance our lives and not make things more difficult but, unfortunately, that is what is happening. I look forward to the response of the Minister of State and I hope she will go back to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, with these concerns. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-16