Entrepreneurs put on hold by bureaucratic slowcoaches

BUSINESS OPINION:THE EXTENT to which the Government's support for entrepreneurs is evident more in word than deed appears to have been neatly illustrated by the treatment meted out to Trevor Patton of the eponymous Flyer bus company.

Mr Patton would, on the face of it, have done all the things that the Government wants the new breed of Irish business people to do.

He has identified an opportunity and exploited it, creating jobs and wealth in the process. No doubt some taxes also flowed the exchequer's way.

The opportunity identified by Mr Patton was the failure of the state-owned Dublin Bus company to serve a part of its market; the quite considerable number of people living along the coast from Dalkey to Sandymount who need to get to Dublin airport either for work or travel.

It may be possible to make these journeys on Dublin Bus, but the journey times are long and in most cases several buses are involved. Mr Patton offered to get you from Dalkey to the airport via the Port Tunnel in 45 minutes and his first bus left at 4am.

He bought a coach business and an operator's licence before applying to the Department of Transport for a route licence. Mr Patton says he applied in June 2006, although the department claims he applied in February 2007.

In any case Mr Patton went ahead and started his business anyway in July 2007, saying he had waited long enough without getting a reply.

Mr Patton does not disclose his passenger numbers, but the fact that he is in business a year later can be taken as an indication that he is not doing that badly. Indeed, he is now talking of opening another four routes.

It's a great story, and presses all the right buttons in terms of how we like to see ourselves in these post-Celtic Tiger days - entrepreneurial, prepared to take risks, customer-focused.

And what makes the story all the better is that it appears the Government's role in this amounts to little more than a determined attempt by the Department of Transport to shut him down for breaking some 72-year-old piece of legislation.

The department has referred Mr Patton to the Garda and has the option of now going to court to get him closed down.

The subtext to this is that the Department of Transport is acting to protect Dublin Bus's monopoly and keep its powerful unions sweet.

The truth, however, is a little more prosaic. According to the department, they were unable to process Mr Patton's application because they were already in receipt of an application from another private operator, Aircoach, to provide a similar service.

Aircoach wants to operate a service from Greystones to the airport via the Dublin Port Tunnel, serving substantially the same route, according to the department.

The department claim they told Mr Patton that they could not process his application until the first one had been dealt with, but he appears to have gone ahead an started his service anyway.

Aircoach was duly awarded a licence on December 15th and they were given four months to commence services, or lose the licence. At that stage, the department will be able to consider Mr Patton's application.

Aircoach no doubt want to see the law enforced as far as Mr Patton is concerned before launching their service.

The explanation from the department is welcome in so far as it contradicts the perception that it has been actively stonewalling Mr Patton because of pressure from vested interests such as the unions at Dublin Bus.

But at the same time it is fair to ask why it took something in excess of 11 months to process an application from Aircoach to operate the route.

This is not the hallmark of an organisation that is actively seeking to encourage the private sector to plug the gaps that Dublin Bus is either unwilling or unable to fill.

While there are undoubtedly issues such as cherry-picking to be considered when deciding whether to allow private operators on to routes, such determinations should not take the best part of a year, particularly in a city with the public transport deficits that Dublin endures.

Mr Patton is no more entitled to break the law than anybody else, but he - and indeed Aircoach - are entitled to regulatory decisions on a timescale that bears some relation to commercial reality. And it's not too much to expect from a Government that makes as much noise as this one over encouraging entrepreneurship.

The Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey, might be better off devoting his energies to tackling this issue, rather than seeking to shut down Mr Patton's successful busine