Sinn Féin TD for Wicklow and Chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), John Brady, has said that the Government’s continued pursuit of a flawed privatisation agenda for public transport has directly led to the deeply unsatisfactory situation where Go-Ahead were the sole bidder for a lucrative five-year contract to operate Public Service Obligation (PSO) bus services across the Outer Dublin Metropolitan Area (ODMA).
The issue emerged following Deputy Brady’s questioning of the National Transport Authority (NTA) at a recent meeting of the PAC.
Teachta Brady said:
“This situation is not an accident, nor is it a surprise. It is the inevitable outcome of a deeply flawed privatisation agenda being driven by the Government, where competitive tendering has been imposed on public bus routes with little regard for service quality or passenger experience.
“The so-called competitive tendering process has once again been exposed as a failure. In this case, it resulted in a situation where Go-Ahead were the only operator to submit a tender, and were effectively rewarded with a new five-year contract despite presiding over five years of misery for commuters under their previous contract.
“Figures provided to the PAC show that the NTA levied fines of more than €5.8 million on Go-Ahead between 2021 and 2024 for poor service delivery. Yet under this privatised model, there appears to be no real consequence for failure.
“This highlights the folly of outsourcing and privatising our public transport system. Instead of genuine competition driving up standards, we see shrinking interest from operators and a race to the bottom in service quality, with commuters left to suffer the consequences.
“Bus users on Go-Ahead routes have endured last-minute cancellations, chronic unreliability, overcrowding, and a complete lack of communication. People have missed work, school, and vital medical appointments, and have been left stranded at the side of the road.
“That this operator could then be handed another five-year contract speaks volumes about how broken this system has become.
“I am calling on the Minister to urgently investigate the process that led to the awarding of this contract. He owes it to commuters who are sick to the back teeth of a failed privatisation model that has prioritised ideology over reliable, publicly accountable transport services.”