Mr. Tom O'Mahony:

The money which the Chairman mentioned is the total it receives from the State from various sources. I am responsible for the money it gets from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, and for its overall corporate governance. It is a commercial semi-State organisation which means that it must operate to a commercial mandate. Board members have fiduciary responsibility as directors and are responsible to the Minister for their performance and for adherence to the code of practice.

As discussed in some detail when I came before the committee last year, in 2012 CIE ran into serious difficulty. I said in my opening statement we had to re-allocate money within our Vote to ensure that it could continue. It has resolved that difficulty through a range of cost-saving measures, changes in processes and procedures. The source of the problem in 2012 was that it had reached the limit of its overdraft and run out of money. It has now negotiated new funding provisions and covenants with its bankers which have dealt with that problem but it needs to maintain the cost-efficiency measures it has put in place. Those have involved difficult industrial relations, IR, negotiations. There were short strikes in both bus companies last year. The IR is at quite a delicate point in Irish Rail. A Labour Court finding was rejected by some of the staff and the company is now in discussion with the unions concerned with a view to tweaking it enough to get it over the line. It is reasonably optimistic of being able to do that.

Until it ran into this difficulty in 2012 we dealt with it on the same basis that we deal with other commercial semi-State organisations in that the directors have prime responsibility but there is a regular flow of information about accounts and corporate governance and there are regular meetings between the Minister and the Department and the company.