Mr. John Fitzgerald:

I will begin by giving some background information on myself. I worked in the private sector for about ten years, during which time I qualified as an accountant. I then moved to the public sector and spent most of my working life in local government. I was the first manager of South Dublin County Council, based in Tallaght, when it was set up in 1994, along with the other two Dublin county councils. I served as Dublin city manager until 2006. Since then I have served as chair of An Post, for one term, and of the Grangegorman Development Agency, which is now the new DIT campus. There are 1,000 students up there at the moment. I was also asked by the Government to look at social problems in Limerick, which were problematic at that time. Consequent to that report to Government, I was asked to chair the agency that was set up to deal with those problems. It was set up for five years with a sunset clause that at the end of five years it would go back into local government. It is now part of the new single authority in Limerick and is still working very successfully there.

The committee is quite familiar with the National Transport Authority, NTA, and we have been here before, so I will not go into too much detail. It was talked about for a long time and eventually when it was set up it was to be a single-purpose authority to bring all transport modes together, which had been pretty disparate in the past, and to bring those into line with infrastructural provision through the planning process. The two areas had operated almost separately since the foundation of the State. It started off as a Dublin body, the Dublin Transport Authority; then its remit was extended nationally and it became the National Transport Authority, with specific planning responsibilities as well. The legislation that established the NTA is very complex, but if one were to boil it down to one sentence in the Act, it is the one that defines its role as "the development of an integrated transport system which contributes to environmental sustainability and social cohesion and promotes economic progress". That says it all. It takes in both the transport and planning aspects. The NTA has an extensive and growing list of functions. This growing list means extra responsibilities and pressures on us, but we accept that as Government acclamation, in a sense, that the authority is doing well and that the Government is prepared to entrust it with more activities than we had before. We have many more activities now than we had in the past. The full list is much to long to discuss here, but the main ones are the contracts with CIE, the provision of integrated ticketing and transport information, the development of the public transport system through capital investment, the licensing of commercial bus services, management and expansion of the rural transport programme, which is the latest addition to the list; the provision of cycling and bus infrastructure, including new buses - Dublin Bus is buying in about 80 new buses and refurbishing many others; the development of a single public transport brand, which we have never had before; and regulation of taxis and hackneys, which is also a more recent development.

The authority has an annual income of approximately €450 million and we spend most of that on subsidies to the CIE companies, as well as a range of things that provide much value for money through local authorities and other agencies. We have big ticket items like the Luas cross-city range, right through to bus shelters.

I have provided the Chairman with a copy of the annual report and there are copies available also for other members of the committee. That gives an overview of what we are at, but I will mention a couple of them. We published two major plans for greater Dublin which accounts for about 40% of the State’s transport, population and economic activity. We published the integrated implementation plan, which was approved by the Minister during the year. We also published the cycle network plan for the greater Dublin area.

We are doing everything we can to prioritise the development of initiatives that will boost the image of public transport. To summarise, we are making public transport more attractive rather than beating people out of their cars. A lot of people are reluctant to be beaten out of their cars but we want to make the public transport offering as attractive as possible, so that people will choose to use it. There is evidence that that is happening.

Members of the committee know the figures. The economy is growing again and we are preparing for the next period of economic activity, which means that there will be a lot more commuters, thankfully. If every one of those commuters chooses to travel into city centres by car, we will not have enough space for them and the whole system will gum up. Everything we are doing therefore is designed to encourage people to get out of cars and use public transport because it is more attractive.

On 1 December, we will have the new five-year contracts with Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann, which are being signed at the moment. Passenger numbers are growing again, thankfully. They had been declining for the last few years. We have decided to open up 10% of subsidised services to competitive tendering in order to introduce benchmark pricing of subsidised bus services. Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann will be able to participate in that tender process.

A new contract for the operation of the Luas service was awarded this year also. In recent months, we have worked closely with Iarnród Éireann which has had particular financial problems. We are looking closely at the operation of the whole rail network in trying to define what exactly is needed to finance Iarnród Éireann in the long term.

In 2013, construction started on the Luas cross-city project. It not only connects both Luas lines, but also runs right up to Grangegorman and connects with the western line. The reality is that while the Luas is visually attractive and adds a lot to the city, the dependence for the time being will be mainly on buses. We are therefore putting a lot of effort into developing the bus system, including new bus corridors. One of the current priorities is the one linking Swords to the city centre, which is going through a public consultation process at the moment. We are putting a lot of effort into that one and there are two others to follow once we get that consultation process finished.

In the meantime, heavy rail is not being forgotten. We are hoping to re-open the tunnel that runs under the Phoenix Park, which would open up all kinds of possibilities to link the south and south west of the city with the city centre, as well as with the south east of the city where a lot of economic activity is happening at the moment.

The Government has introduced legislation to tighten up the taxi sector considerably. We are in the business of implementing that at the moment.

In addition, a lot of work is being done on rural transport. It is something that has been talked about for years and the objective is to try to tidy and tighten it up, making is more cost-effective by reducing the number of bodies involved. It is not just about that, however. Being from rural Ireland myself, I know what it is like for people who live in rural areas but do not have a car. It is important for them to have an alternative, which is the public transport system. We are trying to ensure that new measures are introduced if the existing system is not good enough.

The bike scheme has been very successful in Dublin. It was launched in Galway yesterday, and will be in Cork and Limerick within the next few days.