A PUBLIC TRANSPORT security force is one of the pledges made in the new Programme for Government developed by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and a group of Independents.

The two parties and the Regional Independents have been working on a Programme for Government as they seek to form a Dáil coalition together.

One of the measures included in the document is to create a ‘transport police’ to operate on public transport.

It wants the force to have powers of arrest.

Public transport workers have previously called for the introduction of a dedicated transport police to deal with anti-social behaviour, describing the abuse they face at work.

Refusals to pay, spitting on drivers and sexual assault are among the problems that drivers have described dealing with.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said in November that if his party was in power after the election, creating a transport police would be on his agenda.

“If public transport at night in particular is to work, people need to feel safe on public transport,” Martin said.

Martin told The Journal that there should be no such obstacles, indicating that government agencies such as the gardaí must fulfill government policy.

He said “democratically”, if the government “decides this is the way to go, well then, the agency of the state has to fulfill it”.

“That’s a very fundamental point. I think agencies and people need to realise that too, that there comes a stage when policy is decided upon by government, then it has to be implemented, whether you agree with it or not,” he said.

“In my view, we’re going to have more and more public transport. We’re going to have a Metro in the fullness of time. We’re going to have expanding Luas and so on, the Dart and all of that. We’ll have more buses, and therefore, if it’s to work, we’ve got to make sure that people are secure and safe.”