Bus Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-14
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

Late buses, ghost buses, cancelled buses, buses that go past you because they are packed at peak hours and areas that have been completely abandoned: BusConnects is a shambles. Drivers are stressed to bits with the present box system. They are being harassed and disciplined because they cannot meet ridiculous timetables, with unrealistic routes and timetable requirements. It is an absolute shambles for commuters trying to use the bus system to get to work, for older people, disabled people and students, and for bus drivers who are harassed to bits. All of that is compounded by the privatisation of the system and apps that tell different information. If you go on the Transport for Ireland app, it tells you one thing, bustimes.org tells you something else and reality tells you something else again. It is absolute chaos.
The National Transport Authority, NTA, explains ghost buses as being a result of longer routes and cross-city routes. We told it that when BusConnects was first designed. Some of the worst examples I am getting are in my own area. These are the east spine routes, which used to be the 46A and other routes. My colleague, Councillor Conor Reddy from Finglas, says it is the same with the F spine, which affects Finglas, Tallaght and so on. In the first week of the F spine in his area, he got 350 emails with complaints about buses not turning up and so on.
The question is what we are going to do about it. I have not got time to go into it, but Go-Ahead is performing even worse than Dublin Bus. The whole thing is an absolute shambles. Does the Government recognise the problem? What is it going to do about it?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-14