Mr. Gerry Murphy:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to attend the committee. I will make a relatively short statement as I will not cover what is in the appendices to my presentation. I understand that there are three areas in which the committee are interested - the competitive tendering of subsidised bus services, rural transport and the new local area hackney licence. I will deal briefly with each of those in turn.

First, on our plan to tender bus services, the current contracts with Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann expire in December this year. Following a national consultation exercise last year, we recently notified the European Commission of our intention to do the following: to enter into further contracts with Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann in 2014 for a period of five years; to amend those contracts in 2016 to reduce the services by 10% within those contracts; and to provide those removed services through separate contracts following tender competitions. We plan to start the prequalification stages of those tender competitions in December of this year.

The existing operators, Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann, will be able to tender for those 10% of routes alongside other providers. While this means that the existing publicly subsidised bus market will be partially opened to tendering, all the key decisions affecting the public will continue to be made by the National Transport Authority. We will apply the same level of control and centralised planning to the tendered routes as to the routes which are currently operated by the two CIE companies. We will predetermine the routes, the schedules, the vehicle types and standards, the fares and the customer service requirements. A contracted operator will have no say in fares, routes or frequencies. Customers will be able to use the Leap card, free travel passes will be accepted and the services will be included in our journey planner and real time apps and on the street-side real time displays. The branding will also be determined by the authority as well as accessibility standards and emission standards for pollutants and noise, and compliance will be required with employment law in terms of applicable pay and terms of employment. The object is that this will ensure that the customer's public transport experience will be seamless across the country – there should be no discernible quality difference to bus users regardless of which operator is operating the services. The services will have been designed and will be supervised, in the customer’s best interests, by the authority.

In the case of Dublin Bus services, the routes that will be opened to tender are the orbital routes and some local routes around the city. For those who are familiar with them, examples of the routes are route 17 from Rialto to Blackrock, route 33B from Swords to Portrane and route 111 from Dún Laoghaire to Loughlinstown. For Bus Éireann services, the routes for tender will be the city services in Waterford and certain commuter routes into Dublin along the N4 and N7 corridors, for example, routes 120 from Tullamore and 124 from Portlaoise. A full list of the routes to be tendered is set out in appendix 1 to this presentation. We expect to commence the prequalification process in December and at that time we will advertise the tenders in the Official Journal of the European Union and in a national Irish newspaper.

Moving on to the local area hackney licence, the Taxi Regulation Review Report, published by the Government in January 2012, recommended the introduction of a local area hackney licence to address transport deficits in some rural areas. Certain areas have no public bus services nor have they taxi or hackney services operating in them. To address this need it was decided to introduce a lower cost local hackney licence to service these isolated areas.

In November 2013 the authority created, by statutory regulation, a new form of hackney licence, the main features of which are that the vehicle must meet all hackney requirements other than luggage space requirements; it must meet all age rules – the vehicle must be under 10 years; the fee for the licence issue is to be €50; a tax clearance certificate is required; the licence is non-transferable; and the licence would expire after three years at which time a new application could be made for a subsequent licence. To ensure that the issue of this licence will address a real deficit in services, we have put in place a number of requirements in respect of the licence application. It must include the following: written confirmation of the need for the service from either an established group representing local businesses or a community group who has been granted charity able tax status by Revenue; and an analysis of the need for the service carried out by the relevant local authority with a letter to the National Transport Authority confirming the need for the service. The driver of such vehicle will need to have the appropriate small public sector vehicle licence and a fee of €20 relates to such an application. We have advised the industry of the new procedure and have written to local authorities explaining their role in validation. All this only occurred last month and we have yet to receive an application.

Regarding the rural transport programme, I am sure the members are aware that a value for money review of the rural transport programme was published by the Department of Transport in 2012. The review identified that the organisational structures were contributing to the high cost of administration. That is not to say that the individual groups managing or directly providing services were not pursuing efficiencies and operating well - they were - rather the number of groups was simply too high at 35, leading to a replication of administrative charges across the country. In mid-2013 we devised a new organisational framework for these services and we decided to reduce the 35 groups to 18 transport co-ordination units, based on local authority boundaries or amalgamated local authorities boundaries. In autumn of last year we initiated an application process from within the existing groups to run these new units. The applications have been assessed and all the groups have been advised, as of Monday as, to who will comprise the new units. The listing is set out in appendix 2 to this presentation.

Separate from this organisational structure, we asked the Department of transport to bring forward amending legislation in order that we could enter into services contracts directly with those rural transport groups who own their own fleet. Their fleet contains many wheelchair accessible vehicles and it was vital that we could continue to subsidise those particular service providers. I am very pleased that the amending legislative provision was contained in the Taxi Regulation Act 2013, which has now cleared the way for us to offer bus service contracts, without competitive tendering, to Bantry Rural Transport, Comharchumann Chléire Teo., Clare Accessible Transport, Meath Accessible Transport, North Fingal Rural Transport Company, the Community of Lougharrow Social project, and Carlow, Kilkenny and South Tipperary Rural Transport Company, known as Ring a Link. Alongside these major changes, we have proceeded with some other important developments. We have identified the appropriate IT system for managing such transport provision across the country - the dispatch organisation of services. The Sligo Leader Partnership, funded by the Department of transport, had developed a system and it has innovated its contract with its system supplier to the authority and we have commenced further development of that system for multiple organisation units for all these 18 transport co-ordination units. When finalised it will be a standard across the country.

We are piloting new rural transport services, which co-ordinate with existing school transport services in County Roscommon, in Tramore, County Waterford, and the Copper Coast service also in County Waterford. These started in December 2013 and they avail of the empty return leg of school services. In 2014 we will start retendering all of all rural transport services provided by private bus operators. Currently there is nearly 300 contracts in place. They need to be refreshed and gradually over the next 18 months these will be tendered by the authority.

In summary, the overall restructuring has been necessary in order to protect the level of services in rural areas. As with all State-funded transport services, savings have been required. Our ambition has been to reduce administration but protect services. There are challenges remaining throughout the year in the restructuring but a strong efficient foundation will be created that will enable expansion of these services in the future on foot of economic growth. That concludes my presentation and I hope we can answer any queries that arise.