Dublin Bus puts development plans on hold

Dublin Bus has put significant National Development Plan projects on hold pending clarification of its funding arrangements for the coming year, The Irish Times has learned.

Development objectives including plans for a new £41 million (€52 million) bus depot at Harristown near the Ballymun junction of the M50 and the expansion of the fleet to 1,500 buses are in the balance - at least until after a CI╔ board meeting on December 6th, the day after the Budget.

At that meeting CI╔, the parent company of Dublin Bus, will decide if it is realistic to commit £11 million to cover the cost of the land acquisition at Harristown.

However, Dublin Bus was expected to have completed the purchase by now and it is understood that the company's options on the site expire within weeks. The company urgently needs to know if it can go ahead with the planned order of more than 200 new buses which would be housed there.

Delays with the Harristown project which was to have been completed in full by 2003 would also effect the company's "down-the-line" plans to open another bus depot in the Tallaght area.

Worryingly for the bus company, some of its Tallaght landbank, a key site between the South Dublin County Council headquarters and Tallaght Hospital, has already been earmarked by CI╔ for the Luas line. If this land is transferred to Luas, Dublin Bus will have to seek a replacement. However, because CI╔ is unable to sell land between its constituent companies the bus company is unlikely to be paid for the land it gives to Luas, and will then have to seek further Government funding for replacement land.

The company currently has slightly more than 1,000 buses in its fleet and is unable to order more buses until it has confirmation that it will be able to house them. The National Development Plan target of 1,500 includes provision for about 250 buses operated by sub-contractors. This leaves 250 buses which the company had hoped to house at Harristown. Without that facility the company is highly unlikely to achieve its development plan target by 2006.

The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, has said that funding promised under the plan will be fully delivered but detailed year-on-year targets were not included. This will allow the Minister to assert that even if delivery of key infrastructural projects slows next year, the plan can still be delivered within its seven-year timeframe. The difficulty for Dublin Bus is that it needs to make detailed plans for the coming year.

Sources in the bus company said they have received "honeyed words" from the Department of Public Enterprise, through which funding is provided. But the source added that these stopped short of the guarantee of funding the company requires to progress its objectives.

A spokesman for the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, said however that the annual subvention for CI╔ had risen by about 700 per cent since 1997. The spokesman said how that money was spent was a matter for CI╔ and its individual companies, Bus ╔ireann, Dublin Bus and Iarnr≤d ╔ireann.