Claims that Government officials have stymied Dublin Bus moves to open new routes ahead of regulatory reform are untrue, a senior Department of Transport delegation has told an Oireachtas Committee.

Suggestions that the Department is reluctant to sanction new routes until it has ushered in a regime of franchising and increased privatisation are false, according to Mr Pat Mangan, assistant secretary at the Department.

He was responding to criticism from Labour transport spokeswoman Ms Róisín Shortall, who said there were suspicions that the Department wanted to see expansion of the capital's bus network put on hold until Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan's proposed reforms of the sector had been pushed through.

"Dublin Bus has not been refused because the market is being opened up," Mr Mangan said.

Nor was there truth in the perception that the Department was standing by while bus companies secured routes that they had no intention of operating, solely to frustrate rivals.

"We do not allow operators to impede other operators," said Mr John Brown, a principal officer at the Department.

But Mr Mangan acknowledged the Department had yet to decide whether private operators would be required to pay extra for lucrative licences.

Private bus companies should be charged for such licences because, unlike their public equivalent, the profits they reaped from popular routes were not used to cross-subsidise loss-making services, said Ms Shortall.

There was a 100 per cent increase in licence applications in 2003, the committee heard.