Ms Anne Graham:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee members for the invitation to appear before the committee to assist in its examination of the financial statements of the National Transport Authority, NTA, for 2022. As requested by the committee's secretariat, we have furnished some information in advance.

To assist in answering the committee's questions, I am accompanied by three colleagues from the NTA, namely, Mr. Hugh Creegan, deputy CEO; Mr. Jeremy Ryan, director of public transport services; and Mr. Philip L'Estrange, director of finance and corporate services.

2022 was a year of huge significance for the authority as we guided the public transport system from a mini-lockdown in January to levels of passenger demand that had not been seen since before the Covid-19 pandemic by the end of the year. This required the continued focus and flexibility of both the NTA and the transport operating companies whose resilience had been tested during the pandemic. Government objectives that were announced for 2022, such as the 20% reduction on all PSO fares and the introduction of the young adult card which reduced fares for younger people in the 18 to 24 age group by 50% on PSO and commercial services, were implemented by the NTA during the second quarter of the year. These measures have made a significant contribution in encouraging people back to using public transport services. In fact, Ireland was an outlier in Europe in terms of the speed of recovery of its passenger numbers and now well exceeds pre-pandemic passenger numbers on our bus and light rail services.

However, the rapid recovery did lead to some challenges, such as the reliability and punctuality on PSO bus services. The authority acknowledges that this caused disruption and inconvenience to customers in the latter half of 2022. One of the main reasons for the drop in reliability and punctuality was the problems associated with recruiting additional drivers. The knock-on effect of the lack of drivers was service cancellations, which, in turn, affected reliability. It was also a case that due to the recovery in the economy from Covid-19, traffic congestion was causing significant issues, particularly in our urban areas, and this affected punctuality. That said, the authority, in consultation with the operators, worked extremely hard to resolve the issues and jointly ran a campaign to encourage more people to consider bus driving as a career choice. As the year came to a close, there were signs that the measures were beginning to bear fruit with reliability improving from its low point in autumn 2022. The focus on driver recruitment and the improving reliability continued during 2023 to the extent that the bus operations in Dublin are now at the contracted levels of reliability.

Planning for major capital investments in BusConnects, MetroLink and the DART expansion continued during 2022. Significant progress was made on all three major projects. The DART+ West railway order application was submitted to An Bord Pleanála for its consideration in July 2022 with planning continuing on other elements of the DART+ projects. The railway order application for MetroLink was submitted to An Bord Pleanála for its consideration in September 2022 and the oral hearing was completed by An Bord Pleanála in March this year. In respect of BusConnects Dublin, during 2022 we submitted six core bus corridor applications to An Bord Pleanála for its consideration. The remaining corridors were submitted for planning in 2023 and to date, planning permission has been received for four of the corridors. Work is now under way to commence construction on two corridors early in 2025.

In Cork, the first round of public consultation was held in 2022 for the sustainable transport corridors, which is part of BusConnects Cork. This consultation has continued for a further two rounds and will be finalised shortly.

In terms of key achievements in strategic planning in 2022, we completed and published the Limerick-Shannon metropolitan area transport strategy and the Waterford metropolitan area transport strategy. We also completed the draft greater Dublin area transport strategy 2022-42 and submitted same to the Minister for Transport in line with governing legislation which was subsequently approved in January 2023.

Our investment in active travel continued apace in 2022 with significantly greater than planned walking and cycling schemes delivered throughout the country with planning design commencing and continuing on many others. In 2022, almost €290 million was allocated to active travel projects throughout the State. This investment continues each year such that 750 km of cycling network has been delivered since 2020.

In 2022, procurement commenced on the next generation automatic vehicle location, NGAVL, system and on next generation ticketing, NGT. Both projects have now successfully completed their procurements and are in the implementation phase. The NGAVL project will support better management of the reliability and punctuality of our bus systems as well as improved real time passenger information. NGT will see the further development of integrated ticketing to an account-based system that will support cashless bank card payments.

Our bus network redesign continued in 2022. Two phases of the BusConnects Dublin network redesign were delivered. The G spine and route 60 and the N4 and N6 routes commenced operations in May and October, respectively. Driver and mechanic shortages have impacted the pace of the delivery of the BusConnects Dublin network. However, a further phase was delivered in two parts in 2023 with another planned for later this year. As can be seen from the briefing material, the passenger growth on the new BusConnects services is far higher than on the services where no change has been made.

Our Connecting Ireland rural mobility plan commenced implementation, with phase 1 of the plan delivered in 2022, bringing a range of new routes and improvements to public transport users throughout the State. Over 100 new and improved services delivered under Connecting Ireland to date have led to an eightfold increase in the number of passengers using public transport in rural areas.

It is important to once again acknowledge that the authority received significant additional Exchequer funding during 2022, in particular to address the increased cost of delivery of PSO services and the shortfall in fare revenue. In terms of our funding and expenditure, the authority has been strongly focused from the outset on ensuring we have robust financial and audit controls bearing in mind the scale and range of the authority's financial activities.

I welcome any questions that members of the committee may have.