Mr. Ray Coyne:

I thank Deputy Munster for her comments. She is correct in relation to our employees. They did a significant amount of work over the past number of years and I am not shy about saying it in many forums. We have a long tradition in Dublin Bus and a very proud workforce. I am very proud to be the CEO of Dublin Bus and I recognise that employees faced significant challenges over the past eight years. We need to recognise that. It is something of which we are proud in Dublin Bus and we will certainly do that.

Our fleet is funded by the NTA through capital investment. We could not fund that through our current profit structure. It was mentioned earlier that we have a reasonable profit which is in the order of €1 million to €3 million a year. A double-deck vehicle costs approximately €350,000 and, as such, one would not be able to fund a fleet out of that. One of the key issues in terms of funding our fleet is that we need multi-annual funding to guarantee a steady flow of vehicles into the system. The average age of a vehicle has been independently assessed from a customer point of view and a cost efficiency point of view at six years. Currently, our fleet has an average age of approximately 7.5 years. At current fleet requirements, that would require us to replace 85 vehicles a year. Last year, we replaced in excess of that. It was 110 vehicles. However, in previous years the numbers fluctuated significantly. Multi-annual funding would allow us to get a steady state of replacement of vehicles at the current levels of approximately 85 a year. At €350,000 per bus, the investment required would be of the order of approximately €35 million. It is a significant investment but it is worth it. There are environmental benefits, customer experience benefits and reliability benefits. I was asked if we were underfunded currently. It is a yearly cycle whereby we receive funding and, currently, we are 1.5 years over the average fleet age. That would equate to in excess of 100 buses to replace, but we advocate a steady 85 a year on the current fleet to get an even fleet replacement process and that requires multi-annual funding.