THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE of the National Transport Authority has blamed a driver and mechanic shortage in Cork for Bus Éireann’s current performance in the city. 

Anne Graham also told an Oireachtas committee today that recruitment for drivers for BusConnects in Dublin is “stable” but not satisfactory.

“In terms of driver recruitment, Dublin Bus and Go Ahead are in a stable position but Bus Éireann have shortages in Cork, in particular, which is impacting their performance in the city,” she said before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications at Leinster House today.

She explained that the NTA judges performance based on a number of metrics, including ‘loss kilometres’ – which is a measure of the contracted service kilometres that were not operated – and punctuality which is measured for each stop along the route.

She said the NTA doesn’t pay for any services that don’t operate where failure wasn’t in the control of the operator. 

The lack of drivers and mechanics, she said, has resulted in the loss of services and an increase in ‘loss kilometres’. 

“Recruitment of additional drivers and mechanics for BusConnects in Dublin is steady but not at the pace that we would like to see which is delaying the phase of BusConnects in Dublin,” Graham said before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications at Leinster House today. 

Graham took questions from the committee around issues such as congestion during peak hours, as well as lack of bus frequency and facilities in rural Ireland. 

Graham informed the committee that the public transport sector has seen growth in the past six months. 

“In 2024 to date, we have seen 9% growth on bus services in Dublin, 10% growth in Luas services. Bus services operated outside Dublin by Bus Éireann grew substantially last year – at 20% higher than 2022 passenger journey numbers – but this growth has tempered to 6% so far [this year],” the NTA CEO said.

She added, “Rail services grew to 46.1 million passenger journeys in 2023, which is just back to pre-Covid levels and the growth and volume so far exceeds 2023 levels by 9%.”

After doling out the figures, Graham identified the NTA’s current challenges including the demands faced due to increase in the number of passengers. The total passenger number stood at 311 million in 2023, a 24% increase from pre-Covid times.

She said, “We are working with operators to provide additional capacity where necessary and where drivers and fleet resources allow.”

Last week, the committee met Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan TD to discuss the need to tackle congestion issues in Ireland and it emerged again as a topic today, with an emphasis on Dublin. 

Committee chairman Fianna Fáil Senator Gerry Horkan asked if a change in fare during peak times could improve the situation.

Graham alluded to past mistakes in her response, saying where they did alter fares previously, the desired results were not achieved.

“If we start introducing a layer of off-peak fare, that’s introducing complexity to the system that we have been trying to reduce. There had been an off-peak fare that we introduced in Luas services a number of years ago which we have now removed because it didn’t actually cause any change in behaviour.

“People are travelling at a particular time. They are travelling at that time for a particular reason, and even a substantial fare change doesn’t really make much difference in their driving patterns,” she said.