Mr. Dermot O'Leary:

While I am not affiliated to any political party, my colleague, Mr. Reidy, and I are both familiar with both the Labour Party and Fine Gael manifestos before the previous general election. As Mr. Reidy said, people chose to vote as they did. No matter what party a person represents, people have mobilised already and have used the offices of various Deputies across the political spectrum to voice their disapproval of Bus Éireann's willy-nilly decisions, based on the NTA awarding licences. There was no plan. Mr. Reidy and I are at one regarding this. There was a rush to satisfy some lobby group by privatising 10%. The CEO of the NTA was before the committee in October 2012 and under questioning from the Deputies admitted that as little as 5% savings could be derived from this model and went on to say that this 5% could be subsumed or lost in administration costs. I am back to the point I made at the outset, that this is an illogical decision by the main party in government. It is ill-thought out and has no concern for either the staff or the public.