Mr. Martin Nolan:

I will pass the school-related questions on to my colleague and Ms Andrea Keane will cover some of the corruption issues. On the overall tendering process, all unsuccessful tenderers are given a detailed breakdown of how and why they did not achieve the tender. This is done under the different criteria in respect of where the successful tenderer was and where they were. As for the appeals process, the regional schools transport manager will hear appeals and they obviously have natural appeals as well. As it is a contracted issue, they may appeal back to the legal end of the house on that.

The age of vehicles is 20 years and we do not go beyond that. The key point about such vehicles is of course that they are well maintained. However, because of public perception and so on, we like to reduce the age. We have just gone out for the first time in a few years to buy a number of vehicles. We also have new public service vehicles on the way and the older ones will be cascaded into schools. Such vehicles will be approximately eight or nine years old.