A review of the €1.2 billion in Government subsidies paid to the CIE companies from 2001 to 2005 has found that while the number of people using public transport has increased, public transport's overall share of the market has declined. Dublin Bus passenger numbers also fell in 2005 for the first time in many years.
The report by Booz Allen Hamilton also said constraints on bus numbers had limited the extent to which network coverage and services had been extended.
Overall, the report found that 'good value' had been obtained from the subventions, and measures of efficiency were 'moving in the right direction'.
But it said there was strong upward pressure on costs and the CIE companies were unable to fund their capital investment needs, including replacing bus fleets.
In order to increase public transport numbers, BAH called for more investment in infrastructure, moves to increase bus priority, control of costs and more attractive fare policies and integrated ticketing.
The Department of Transport said it would be taking up a number of issues raised by the report with the CIE companies.
These would include the redeployment of the Dublin Bus fleet in response to the LUAS, identifying other reasons for the Dublin Bus drop, fare systems, performance indicators and improvements in the areas of timetables and real-time information.
The BAH report found that measures of efficiency were improving at Bus Eireann and Irish Rail, but similar measures at Dublin Bus had fallen. It blamed traffic congestion and also said there was 'scope to improve driver efficiencies'.
