THERE WAS nothing preventing a private company from applying for a licence to operate a bus service on any available Dublin routes, Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey said.

“There is a licensing system under the 1932 Act. By December 9th next year, if there are new PSO routes to be put in place, they will also be open to the private sector,” he added.

Mr Dempsey said the normal procedure each year was that a certain number of buses were bought and older ones were taken out of service, if that was necessary.

“That is a matter under discussion between management and unions in the company and I do not want to stray into that area.”

The Minister was replying to Fine Gael spokesman Fergus O’Dowd who said that job losses could be reversed by reorganising routes and allowing private enterprise to come in and re-employ those people working on buses which were being mothballed.

Mr Dempsey said he had asked the chairman of Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann to submit a detailed programme for the implementation of recommendations of a Deloitte Touche report.

A decision on the implementation period would be made in the context of that programme taking account of the estimate in the report that the redesign of the Dublin network could take 18 to 24 months. Mr Dempsey said he had met representatives of Siptu and the NBRU who had also warmly welcomed the report and supported lots of recommendations on the network.

Labour spokesman Tommy Broughan said the move to a more sustainable form of transport was a kind of sick joke by the Minister in the context of the loss of 600 jobs and 300 buses in Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann.