Mr. Gerry Murphy:

While we intend to enable the rural hackney licence, I am not sure what will be the need or response for it because it will be allowed only in areas where there is no other provision. Current taxi or hackney drivers should not be worried that we will license somebody who will be operating in the same areas as them. One of the features, which we have already discussed with our taxi advisory committee and the industry, is that we will have to be advised by local authorities and, say, rural transport groups that a service is not provided by anybody operating in the area before we will consider that rural hackney licence. I do not see it as a threat. It is an enabling mechanism, yet at this stage I am not sure how many will be issued or where they will be issued.

Regarding direct award contracts, Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann are in a direct award contract with us. They are internal operators in the country and they are allowed to be given a contract for services without tendering under EU regulations and national legislation. In the same way the rural transport groups that own their own fleets, and operate greater than 50% of their services through their own fleets, can be given a direct award contract. That will secure many of the groups and the wheelchair-accessible vehicles being used throughout the country.

On the cost to the local authorities, our hope is that the local authorities will offer this accommodation free of charge on the basis that it should be surplus accommodation.

We are really only seeking a unit for four people. We feel they have space available and they have diminishing numbers, so there should be an opportunity whereby the programme will not have to bear the cost of rental accommodation so that more money can go into the services.

I will hand over to Ms Graham to speak about job losses. Before doing so, however, I think there is a recurring theme whereby the 35-group model is the only one appropriate and satisfactory to rural transport provision. It grew up that way in Ireland but that is not the way it is offered in many other European countries that have much better rural transport provision. They have regional models which allow them to reduce administrative costs. In Ireland's case, it was a response from the ground to fill a need, but it is not the most efficient structure for doing so. It is not efficient to have 35 managers reporting on finance and other issues to boards. That is a repetitive task which involves unnecessary duplication across the country. We want to retain the skills, as Ms Graham mentioned, of local administrators and managers who know what the needs are, as well as the dispatchers who are in touch with people in taking calls. Those are the jobs we need to keep. However, certain functions are being duplicated right across the country which are unnecessary for the programme. It would not reflect international practice where services are provided on a much better basis than in Ireland. We acknowledge that and would like a lot more subsidy to go into the rural transport programme.

Perhaps Ms Graham could now deal with the job losses.