Mr. Jim Meade:

We do not keep it. It goes straight to the NTA. That is since the start of the year.

The changes to fares are done by the NTA. They collect the fare box. We submit our budget every year and they approve it or not, which they did last year for the current year. Then we have to provide our services against that budget and not go over it. In that context, it does not really impact on us.

It will impact on us in certain areas. I commute in and out from Newbridge when I stay up and the short-hop zone will be extending out as part of this. That will draw a lot more people onto that network and it will become a capacity issue for us quite quickly, particularly in the greater Dublin area, as we extend the short-hop zone. What we will be looking at increasingly is how this can be done. As we go through this afternoon, the committee will hear more from us on where we are going with the fleet and when we expect to see new trains on the system. There will be a pinch point with capacity because we are already seeing it with the rate of recovery we have had. The fare structure is looked after by the NTA. The benefit, or not as the case may be, will be to its account and not to ours.

The Navan rail line is in plan already. That is something that will happen. Part of Mr. Hendrick's team is looking after it. They have just put the team in place and they are starting with the planning phase of that.

Dublin Airport is not in the current NDP. It is called out in the All-Island Strategic Rail Review. It is a line item in that review for consideration. The All-Island Strategic Rail Review, as I stated in my note, was out for public consultation. Consultation has gone back. The Department is collating that. I believe they hope to publish it as soon as they can. We inputted into that. It is the Department's document. It details all three airports, Belfast, Dublin and Shannon, to be considered for connection to the heavy-rail network. Arising out of that review, the next steps for post-final publication will be to identify the projects we want to move forward with and start the plan on those.

Later trains is always an issue for everybody. It is something we have looked at. We have added some in the current timetable. By sweating the assets, we have more. We are constantly looking at that. There is a trade-off between maintaining the railway, which we can only do at night, and how late we operate and how early we start so that we create a window for the infrastructure people to get in, maintain the railway and keep it at the level we want to keep it at. That will always be a trade-off but we are considering the possibilities on all routes. As we roll out our new fleets, including the new Alstom fleet and the battery-electrics, we will be able to start cascading fleet, particularly onto the regional routes that are currently there because, off the first two orders, we will be adding these fleets and we will not be taking anything out. That will allow us to cascade, to provide for hourly services to the major cities, and to put on later trains once we have that fleet.

The dining service was mentioned as well by the Leas-Chathaoirleach. When we came back after the pandemic, we went to put back the full service. Costs had increased, in some cases fourfold or fivefold. We pay for somebody to provide that service. We had a limited budget from the NTA to do it.