Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentation. By all accounts, the rural transport scheme has worked very well over the years at a cost that is very good by today's standards. A major issue for many people with whom I have spoken is local knowledge on the part of the local community driver. That knowledge is extremely important and I fear that we are cutting back on that by reducing the number of companies and the number of local people who will have an input. The people who know what is happening on the ground are those in the rural areas where there are people who are isolated, vulnerable, sick, old and wheelchair-bound. That local knowledge is vitally important and reducing 35 groups to 18 units will have an impact on that.

We have spoken about the subsidies, which have been reduced year on year, but we should not try to fix something that is not broken. We might patch it up here and there but we should not overhaul the entire system. That is one of the problems we face. When Pobal carried out a review, its representatives travelled 150 km through the entire area of Galway and found that the number of checks that had to be carried out were extremely difficult to do. If we cut back on those we will face more problems. Centralising the service is a bad idea. We must prioritise local knowledge because otherwise the managers and others will end up doing more work.

I have a number of questions, the first of which is on the rural hackney plan being done under the review of taxis. What percentage of this measure will contribute towards that plan? Many taxi drivers are concerned that introducing this new tier of hackneys will impact on their businesses. I do not know if the witnesses have taken into account all of that.

Will the witnesses explain the direct award contracts with no tendering? Is that a good idea? How will it work? Is there a cost to local authorities who will house some of these companies? If that is the case has that been factored in? Will there be job losses in some of these companies and on the part of individuals, particularly local people who have small companies? Has the impact of those in the communities been factored in? Everything must be weighed up in that regard.

Mr. Murphy mentioned that Colm McCarthy wanted to abolish this programme. Mr. McCarthy had very right-wing driven ideas in terms of abolishing many facilities and much that was good in this society, including social welfare and other cutbacks in those areas.

There are areas that can be examined but whatever way we mask this we are talking about cutbacks, which will have a huge impact on local communities. Despite what has been said, certain areas will not get a service, as happened with Dublin Bus when services in many local communities were lost. We were told that was a great idea but we ended up with many communities not being served, with very few savings achieved.