A significant increase in anti-social behaviour on the capital’s buses, including violent and racist threats, mirrors a growing trend in the city, Dublin Bus chief executive has said.
Billy Hann was speaking after a Dublin Bus driver was threatened with a suspected handgun on Mountjoy Square in the city centre on Friday night.
Reports of anti-social behaviour on the Dublin Bus network have more than doubled since before the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, there were 494 reported incidents while last year there were 1,053.
“When you look at anti-social behaviour on our network ... it’s a microcosm of what’s going on in society,” said Mr Hann.
The sharp increase since 2019 is “reflective of what’s going on on the streets of Dublin”, he said.
He said it is important to note that the company provided 159 million passenger journeys last year and reports of violence or threatening incidents are tiny in comparison. “But we would rather have none,” he said.
Mr Hann, who took over as chief executive in 2022, said the “vast majority of incidents are “low level” but that there has been several serious incidents like Mountjoy Square.
“We have seen full assaults on drivers in the past. That doesn’t happen every day, thankfully. We have drivers being verbally abused from time to time, being spat at, racial abuse, all the spectrum of anti-social behaviour. But it is spread across a wide spectrum of various different issues and problems.”
Regarding racial abuse, Mr Hann said Dublin Bus employs people from more than 85 countries. “That alone is going to increase the amount of racial abuse you’re going to have. Is it a major issue? I don’t think so. Is it an issue? Absolutely. There would be a certain amount of it in the background.”
Mr Hann pointed to several recent initiatives to increase safety on the transport network, which is the biggest in the State. These include the deployment last October of “Safer Journey Teams”, comprising security personnel who patrol “hot spots” for anti-social behaviour.
Since Friday’s incident, a new one of these teams has focused its activities around Mountjoy Square, said Mr Hann.
He said Dublin Bus has also been lobbying for the establishment of a dedicated transport police with powers of arrest.
Gardaí are continuing to investigate the incident on Friday night when a driver disturbed someone who appeared to be attempting to steal items from the number 13 bus, which was out of service at the time.
After getting off the bus, the person pointed the suspected gun at the driver and threatened to kill him. He left the scene, leaving the driver “shocked and upset”, said a union official.
