Dublin Bus has been deducted €8 million from their budget because of service and punctuality issues from last year.
Transport Minister Eamon Ryan told the Dail the deductions were applied sue to issues throughout 2022. He said €8m and €2.4m were taken from the contacts of Dublin Bus and Go-Ahead Ireland, respectively.
The Green Party leader said the deductions were "commensurate with a drop-off in the quality of service provided". There have been numerous reports of "ghost" bus services disappearing from real-time displays.
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He told the Dail: "Every bus operator will tell the same story. To address this challenge and help close the gap, we engaged with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and secured agreement for 1,500 work permits for drivers who are needed across the country."
A spokesperson for Dublin Bus told the Irish Examiner they operate 121 routes, including 10 24-hour services and 13 Nitelinks, but struggled with "volatile traffic conditions" at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Dublin Bus received a €5m deduction from our contract by the National Transport Authority for services we were unable to operate in 2022 due to various challenges around the expansion of the network and an industry-wide recruitment challenge", they said. "This deduction is essentially a refund of sums previously provided to Dublin Bus by the National Transport Authority.
"Dublin Bus also received a net penalty deduction of €2.8m for performance penalties, primarily in the area of punctuality. The punctuality issues in 2022 were mainly due to the volatile traffic conditions resulting from the city's adjustment to new travel patterns post-covid-19 and the ongoing challenges with driver recruitment.
"However, despite these challenges, Dublin Bus successfully implemented two further phases of the BusConnects programme and increased the total number of kilometres operated from 57.7m in 2021 to 60.6m in 2022."
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