Billy Hann, CEO of Dublin
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk. Well, now I'm joined by Billy Han, CEO of Dublin Bus, to look at where the service stands from their current recruitment drive to plans for expanding routes and fleet capacity alongside the challenges of rising fuel costs, decarbonisation, congestion in the city, the misuse of bus lanes, ongoing concerns about antisocial behaviour. Billy Han, good morning and welcome.
Good morning, Pat. It's great to be here.
I've listed your headaches there. Quite a lot to get through, for sure. Yeah, let's talk about antisocial behaviour, first of all, because if you're on a bus and there's messing going on, it can be very uncomfortable. It can, for sure.
And look, what we're trying to do is create a more comfortable journey for our customers and for our employees as well. I've been on the show before talking about our Safer Journeys team when we actually introduced it. We did have four security guards at that time operating on ourselves. Teams of two. Teams of two, so six in total. So we now have two working on the north of the city, two on the south side and two in central Dublin. And it's been reasonably successful. Pat, it's not a silver bullet, which we said it would have been. We said that at the time. And the reality is when I look at the number of incidents in 2025, we're about 1,044 versus 1,054 the previous year. But we've carried more passengers.
So the rate is actually reducing.
But in 2019, it was only 500.
That's very, very true. And that's why we introduced that onto the service. Now, look, we do have the Transport Security Force being stood up by this government and they're in the process of doing that at the moment. So that will help also.
Now, the kind of things that you encounter, people obviously under the influence of drugs are also consuming drugs. People who are under the influence of alcohol, you get fighting, you get pickpocketing. And then something that's really nasty, stone throwing at buses, breaking bus windscreens, stuff like that. We do get that.
What challenges does Dublin Bus face with antisocial behavior?
We get the whole range of antisocial behaviour pat on our services of that 1044 I mentioned earlier. Some very, very minor in nature, some quite serious up to full assault, as you mentioned there. The Stone Throne is a really, really interesting one because what we tend to do there is your Safer Journeys team aren't necessarily going to crack that nut. But we do a lot of work with the communities, particularly in various different areas where we do have problems with councillors, with the community activists.
Sometimes you have to withdraw a service because it's too dangerous. They do. Now, that brings its own pressure on the community because they'd be saying it's not our fault. Well, it is coming from within your community. So let the people, the community leaders, try to do something about it.
And that's why we use those community leaders to try and address those issues. No better place for issues like that to be addressed from within the community itself. And the councillors help us with that as well. And look, stones have to come from somewhere, right? So it's important if there is building sites around the areas that they're maintained properly as well.
Now, one of the impacts of all of this is if you get a windscreen that's cracked, it has to be repaired. Now, time-wise, you'd be pretty sure it might be repaired overnight, but with recruitment of mechanics and all of that, it might not be repaired for a day or two, which means a missing bus.
That's correct. But we would have spare buses in the fleet, which we can roll out for those particular situations. But going back to what you said earlier, if we feel that our customers and our drivers are in danger from stone thrown, and we have had pellet gun attacks as well, we will withdraw it for a number of hours. If we feel the issue is resolved, we'll put that service back into operation that day. However, if it continues, we withdraw it for a full 24 hours, then reassess it. And if everything's okay, put the service back into operation.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–1:48
2
What challenges does Dublin Bus face with antisocial behavior?
1:48–5:53
3
How is Dublin Bus addressing the issue of rising fuel costs?
5:53–12:58
4
What plans does Dublin Bus have for expanding routes and fleet capacity?
12:58–14:07
5
What improvements are planned for the bus tracking system?
14:07–14:49