Mr. Gerry Murphy:

I thank the Chairman. On the issue of value for money in tendering, which was raised by Deputy Dooley, there has been a definite growth in competitive tendering throughout Europe, and there is competitive tendering in Australia and New Zealand. Various studies and reports have been done on the cost savings. Generally, the literature indicates that there have been cost savings from competitive tendering, but the literature will vary. It does not always come up with a figure of 20% to 30%. It very much depends on the starting base; in other words, if there was a very inefficient internal operator, significant savings of 20%, 30% or even 40% might be realised in some areas of New Zealand. However, in some other jurisdictions savings of only 5% were achieved. That material is what we are currently examining.

There is definitely an ancillary cost to the State if it moves from one internal operator to a number of operators. The rule of thumb is that if savings of 20% to 30% are achieved, 5% of savings lost could be due to centralised control. There is an issue associated with that.

Public bus services can be smartly supervised these days because of technology. With reports generated automatically from vehicle location information, we can quite easily run software routines to audit these. The tools for supervision are much more sophisticated now.

We would not end up with a disjointed network. People have cited London. London is unique compared to other cities because individual routes are tendered out as packages. A team of 15 people manages this across the entire network, and they have a rolling cycle of tendering. The end product for the consumer is the same: the red London bus with real-time information, integrated fares etc. That is what would happen if there were competitive tendering here. There is no way we would wish to create a disjointed network because it would not serve the consumer well. Staff must be taken on at the same rates and with the same terms and conditions under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment), TUPE, requirements. I believe that captures most of the Deputy's points.

To answer Deputy Ellis, the EU directives are mandatory for Ireland and they are further embodied in Irish law in the Dublin Transportation Authority Act, which states that where the authority proposes to enter into direct award contracts subsequent to the first ones - which applies to the 2014 contracts - it may do so only where it is satisfied that the continued adequacy of the public bus services can only be guaranteed in the general economic interest by entering into such contracts. That is why I said this is a careful process for us. We must satisfy EU law and Irish law. In that context we have to ask if the general economic interest is served by direct award contracts, and if it is not served, what is the proportion that would be served.

All the commercial licences we receive - which are not contracts - are scrutinised. We create the equivalent of a planning file in a local authority in which we have the submission from the operator. We assess the impacts, write a report, and then offer. The operator can appeal the offer; we then appoint a different officer to decide on the appeal. All of those files are compiled for each licence application in the State.

I agree with the Deputy on the point about safeguarding the national interest. The national overall public transport interest is our function. We apply an even ground between the State operator and the private operators on the licensing side; on occasions we have been accused by both parties of over-favouring the other party.

I will hand over to Ms Ann Graham, who will deal with Deputy Fleming's question on school transport services and the percentage of private operators of rural bus services.