The official reason for their withdrawl, as I know someone who made a complainant at the time was because they were "Life Expired" The same person as mentioned now along with others has gone back to the car. A complaint to Dublin Bus fell on death ears, who once again stated that they were "Life Expired" and that customers would benefit from a more comfortable and reliable experience from the timetable changes and the change to double decker operation which would increase capacity, either they are purposely using spin, or someone who made the call has absolutely no idea what they are talking about and no idea of the route itself from their office.

They would have been withdrawn earlier than they actually did if head office got their way, but after last years removal of local management in each garage to a large degree, it becomes easier for these kind of things to be pushed through than would have been a few years ago, as it is not so easy for depots to have their say as they did years ago in CIE, as Capwell in Cork have found out when they lost a number of their VWD allocation to Broadstone.

The fact is Dublin Bus have a mental note in their head that 12 years is life expired. It's nowhere near it, we keep hearing Dublin Bus bang on about how good their maintenance is and how it compares favorably with the UK groups, but the UK are getting far more bang for their buck out of vehicles. Unfortunately this is part of the problem with a publicly owned bus company, they know they will get a set amount every year in subsidy and other rebates, and particularly during the Celtic tiger years they got used to huge numbers of new buses every year, not paying for a good number of them, that we went from 20 years being too old to 12 years too old.

If Dublin Bus was a private company and had to pay their own way for new vehicles all the time there would be no chance they would be shipping vehicles out after less than 12 years of service, it would be financial suicide and they wouldn't last very long. But with the way the CIE companies are set-up. The mentality they have at the moment is that of someone who has been spoilt over the years and don't want to cut their cloth accordingly now, a 12 year old lifespan is not viable in these times, for a company which is losing money.