Sir, - Does the fact that senior citizens travel free of charge mean that Dublin Bus feels they can be treated as inconsequential? My experience recently would lead me to believe this is true. While waiting on the No. 17 bus at Uncle Tom's Cabin, Dundrum, an old man approached me, asking me to inform him whenever I saw the bus approach. Because he was so frail on his feet and had a lot of shopping with him, he needed to sit on a wall beside the bus stop from where the bus could not be seen.
When the No. 17 arrived, I let the man know and then got on the bus and paid my fare. The bus driver, ignoring the man, drove away and left him standing at the stop. After the driver ignored my many calls to stop, I knocked loudly on the perspex partition of the driver's compartment. When I said I would report the incident, he acknowledged me with a look that assured me it did not bother him, and he felt he was above being reprimanded. That man was left at the bus stop, to wait perhaps another 30-40 minutes for the next bus.
As a tutor at UCD, if I came near treating any one of my students the way both that man and I were treated I would be out of a job straight away. Perhaps as part of basic driver training, Dublin Bus might include a lesson in good manners and common courtesy, and teach its employees that Ireland's current prosperity is based on the contributions of people like that old man I encountered today. How can we expect young children to respect others in modern society, if a semi-state company blatantly disrespects those least likely to fight for their entitlements? - Yours, etc., Niamh Moore,
Department of Geography, University College Dublin,
Dublin 4.