THE CHAIR OF the Public Account Committee (PAC) has said it is an “absolute scandal” that nearly €7 million has been spent on storage and servicing of electric buses that haven’t yet been deployed due to delays installing chargers.

Sinn Féin TD John Brady criticised the Department of Transport and the National Transport Authority (NTA) over the lack of charging infrastructure which means 98 buses have remained in storage.

Sinn Féin said correspondence between PAC and the NTA revealed that 98 buses remain in storage, costing taxpayers almost €20,000 every week, with around €520,000 more in storage costs expected before all vehicles enter service.

“This is an absolute scandal,” Brady said. “At a time when families are under immense pressure from the cost-of-living crisis and every euro of public money must be carefully managed; millions have been wasted storing buses because those responsible failed to ensure there was somewhere to charge them.”

He said the news is a “shocking indictment of the failure to properly plan for the rollout of electric public transport”.

“This is not a minor oversight. It is a fundamental failure of planning, oversight and project management.” 

‘Significantly higher’

Speaking to The Journal, a spokesperson for the NTA said that as a result of procurement and planning delays, buses which had been manufactured were not able to go into service due to the lack of charging infrastructure.

However, they said that if new buses hadn’t been ordered until after the charging infrastructure was put in place, it would have pushed the delivery of new buses back by up to two years and caused “significantly higher” costs.

“Accordingly, the adopted approach of parallel procurement of the fleet and the associated electric chargers, was, even with the incurred storage costs, a lower cost outcome than the alternative of delaying the bus purchases for over a year until the charger installations were complete,” they said.

According to the NTA, the total cost of the storage and servicing of the 384 electric buses purchased by the NTA over the past 4 years is €6,962,227, around €2,349,892 of which relates to the use of the storage sites and insurance coverage.

They said: “Aligning full alignment between the provision of new electric bus fleet and the completion of electric charger installations is very challenging.”

The spokesperson said that as buses are built to order, it can be up to 24 months in the time between the placing of an order and the NTA purchasing the bus, while there can be up to a year between the delivery of the first bus and the last bus under a single order.

They said installation of electric chargers requires securing enhanced grid connection and obtaining planning consent, as well as acquiring chargers and a civil engineering contract to undertake the construction works.

“These interdependencies mean that it is exceedingly difficult to perfectly align the completion timing of all elements of the electrification process. This has also been the experience internationally with virtually all bus operators,” they said.

The Department of Transport has been contacted for comment.