Mr. Gerry Murphy:

In a year's time, I expect that we will have completed our western rail corridor review, we will have completed our public transport reviews of all the other regions in the State - the rural areas outside the regions' city pockets - and we will have completed a review of local services in Dublin. Then we will have the scale of what we would like to provide and the scale of what we can provide, and we will ask what changes we can make. I definitely feel that a block of work will be done that could help me to better answer Deputy Dowds's question in a year's time.

What we have done - we have only been in existence for three years - is to work closely with Dublin Bus on the reconfiguration of Dublin Bus services. We have substantially reconfigured city services in the four cities. We have now taken over the rural transport function and we are looking at how we can utilise services better across the State to fill the gaps. There has been a lot of work done but I acknowledge there is other work to be done.