Extended bus service

The Minister for Public Service, Ms O'Rourke, announced an extended Dublin Bus Nitelink service.

She said it would operate from next week until January, and then permanently throughout the year on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, transporting about 10,000 passengers nightly.

The Minister said the service would commence on Thursday, November 30th, and operate nightly up to and including Saturday, January 6th, except for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The service would operate on a continuous basis, about every 20 minutes, from 12.30 a.m. to 4.30 a.m.

It would include:

Four new routes to Ashbourne, Dunboyne, Kilnamanagh and Cornelscourt, bringing the total number of routes to 20.

Existing services would be extended into suburban housing estates. For example, it was proposed to operate services into residential areas in Tallaght and Clondalkin.

Some existing services would travel further.

A number of suburban pick-up points along the route on the Nitelink buses would be introduced.

Ms O'Rourke was responding to a Fine Gael private member's motion deploring the "worsening chaos" across all sectors of the public transport system.

The Minister, who strongly criticised Fine Gael's performance on transport issues when it was in power, said her Department was just finalising proposals for more liberal guidelines for bus licensing in the greater Dublin area.

Next month, the Cabinet infrastructure committee would consider proposals relating to the institutional arrangements for transport and land use in Dublin, said Ms O'Rourke. Next year, her Department would complete a review of bus market regulation outside Dublin.

Earlier, the Fine Gael spokesman on public enterprise, Mr Jim Higgins, said it was ironic that in the week the Minister for Finance had announced a record £18 billion Budget expenditure, no mainline trains were running, leaving 50,000 passengers stranded, that Aer Lingus pickets paraded outside the State capital's airport, while the Government's failure to tackle the taxi issue in Dublin had led to a frenetic and hysterical backlash by the taxi-owning monopoly.

"If one sets out to deliberately create transport chaos across the entire public transport area, one could not make a better job of it than the abject failure of the different Government Ministers responsible for the overall management of the State's transport, but particularly the Minister for Public Enterprise, who is the main shareholder in all our State utilities."