Bus Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-15
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

We will take Dublin as an example. I am using Dublin because two Dublin Deputies have asked this question. We had 164 million passenger journeys on Dublin Bus alone last year. Those are record-breaking numbers. That has been supported by new services being rolled out and improvements to existing services, even acknowledging that there have been human resource challenges. We still have issues in some areas with reliability of services. The ghost bus phenomenon needs to be addressed because the customer needs to be central to everything our bus and rail operators do all the way across the country. It has to be about serving the paying customer because people are responding to the investment. We will not be able to do every new route that everyone wants in one particular year. We have to step that out and move it through.
Deputy Currie mentioned the N8 and has asked me direct questions on that before, as have Deputy O'Gorman, the Minister, Deputy Chambers, and others. I intend to get that route in place in 2026. I am clear about that.
We have to work with partners in the NTA and we have a budget to manage. We do not have infinite resources either. Let us be clear about that, too. Getting the PSO onto a sustainable footing was critical. I was not going to do what was done over the past five years, which was to depend on large supplementary budgets coming in at the end of every year to support service expansion. That is not the way to do business. That is why my two Minsters of State and I insisted that we get a significant increase into the base in the PSO. That gives us a real platform to move forward into 2027 to 2028 and beyond.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-15