Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not disputing any of that. My point is that CIE is a deeply inefficient organisation. It has real expenditure problems. This organisation before it was set up spent €500,000 on a report to outline there was corruption in CIE. CIE threw money to conduct a secret report. What the NTA is doing is getting buses to run efficiently but it is shovelling money at an organisation that is inherently inefficient and deficient in the way it handles its own funds. The evidence for that is quite clear and not just in the Baker Tilly report which found the corruption, and not just in all sorts of other areas that keep emerging. The evidence is in last year's accounts. I am sure Mr. Murphy knows what happened. Does he feel comfortable in willy-nilly subsidising this body by giving it carte blanche to increase fares by vast amounts? An increase of 15% is a significant increase and the fares have increased again this year, when the auditors find that it is not even fulfilling its obligations. In effect, the auditors qualified their accounts, but it was not a formal qualification. However, the NTA is giving CIE carte blanche to go ahead and is giving it the money as required because the operators have lost their subsidy.

I am not saying the National Transport Authority is doing a bad job but why is it giving CIE money?

What does the National Transport Authority require in exchange? Is it getting transparency from them? Does it know what is happening in the internal CIE accounts? We all know the company is a shambles and not only because it is making a loss.