The transport minister has ruled out the establishment of a dedicated transport police unit, as he welcomed the decision by Dublin Bus to deploy security guards across its services.
Teams of security personnel will travel on buses every day on afternoon, evening and night services due to a sharp increase in incidents of anti-social behaviour.
The programme will begin as a 20-week pilot with two dedicated mobile units, one for Dublin’s northside and one for the southside.
Eamon Ryan said there was no need to have a dedicated public transport police unit.
Today, I am pleased to announce the launch of the @dublinbusnews Safer Journeys Team—a new initiative that introduces a visible, approachable security presence on our services. This is a key step in our commitment to making every journey on Dublin Bus a safer journey.
(1/4) pic.twitter.com/lTl1TDh0lpAdvertisement— Billy Hann (@CEO_DublinBus) October 7, 2024
“I believe An Garda Siochana are the right people to police our transport systems as well as others,” the Green minister said.
“But it’s also very good when public transport operators, as Dublin Bus are doing today, supplement that, putting extra services on so that people feel safe, feel secure.
“I feel that model works and we have really fast and close contact with the guards (An Garda Siochana), which is a critical part of that.
“We see it working on the Luas, we see it on the rail, I’m very glad that Dublin Bus are adding their own additional services to complement what the guards can do.
“What really works as well is community policing. When we have had difficulties in the past, what really stops it is when we work local community guards with Dublin Bus. So that when we do have a problem, that it’s bottom up, grassroots. You are not going to deny a community a service by all that behaviour and I think that is a key part to the solution as well.”
He made the comments as the number of journey numbers on public transport reached a record high, with people using public transport more than a million times a day.
This represents an increase of 12% compared with the period last year.
Mr Ryan said: “We want to give a million thanks to the Irish people. For the first time ever, every day one million people buying a ticket for our trains, our buses in Dublin and around the country, city services, town services. It’s a phenomenal increase we are seeing in public transport.
“We had over 300 million passengers for the first time last year, but we will shatter that record this year.
“We agreed in the budget last week that we would keep going with rural services. Sixty new services last year, and same again this year. It is transforming rural Ireland.
“New town bus services – Mullingar and Ennis next up.
“Every time we put a town bus service up, we see a dramatic rise in demand.”
National Transport Authority chief executive Anne Graham said there have been capacity issues across public transport due to a “very significant” increase in commuters travelling into Dublin.
“We do know that there is capacity issues at times, and we recognise that at times people aren’t able to get on our very full services and we are working with the operators to make sure that our capacity increases, that we meet that demand,” Ms Graham said.
“We have seen some very significant growth in commuter services into Dublin, both in rail and bus.
“That is where we are seeing very significant growth, and we are working with operators to respond to that by putting in additional services.
“I think an additional service went on today, on the 133 from Wicklow this morning.
“This growth is fantastic. We are delighted to see it but we have to respond as quickly as we can with additional capacity and we are working with Bus Eireann to deliver that.”
