Mr. Gerry Murphy:

Deputy Dooley has a valid concern about increasing regulation, but I assure him that I would anticipate there will be less regulation. Currently, the groups are reporting to Pobal, which is acting on behalf of the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. They have a reporting line. We are stepping into the reporting line. Our objective is to reduce the administrative demand on the groups, to reduce the level of reporting required to align it more with the type of reporting we are already seeing from Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann. We will not increase the regulation on the groups nor on the network that represents the groups. One of the objectives when we met them yesterday was to find a way to proceed and to see what we could target as the key information they need to generate for us rather than just generating rafts of information which is a demand on them. I assure Deputy Dooley that our objective is to simplify the process for the new groups that are set up to deliver services.