Bus Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-26
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Ciarán Ahern (LAB), Dublin South-West

That is exactly the point. It is about the interim measures. The roll-out of this programme is piecemeal, and I can understand why, but until we have all the infrastructure in place and all the routes perfectly link up, as per the overall plan, we are going to have issues like this. I ask again that the Minister talk to the NTA and suggest that it review this and maybe implement the 49 route again to run alongside the F1 route in the interim, while this is going on. We need measures like bus gates, priority traffic lights and all that kind of stuff. These are the technological measures we can take to give buses priority. In the meantime, however, an additional route to replicate the 49 route would be very helpful.
The route change has left parts of the community isolated, where once there was a service. Older people in particular are having to walk 15 or 20 minutes to get to a bus stop, where they used to have one pretty close to them. There have also been issues with the reliability of buses. Because this is a cross-town route, people are getting caught in traffic coming from the northside and going to the southside. Some constituents have had to pay nearly €200 in taxis because buses are not showing up and have become increasingly unreliable, which is another problem. I ask again that the Minister talk to the NTA about it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-26