Professor Aisling Reynolds-Feighan:

Public service obligations have been successful in a number of contexts both in filling a service requirement and also in introducing greater flexibility in terms of matching service needs. It will also inject cost competitiveness and cost effectiveness into the provision of public transport services. I would welcome this. The National Transport Authority can work with communities in identifying service needs and tendering to fill those needs. If they require subvention, and many of them do as they are not commercially viable without subsidy, we must be explicit in identifying the services that require subvention rather than having cross-subsidisation on the part of operators. We therefore identify where there is a public service requirement and pay for it, if that is required. I believe it will improve the provision of services, inject responsiveness and put a focus on costs and minimising the cost of provision of the service. That is better for Ireland as a whole because if we can produce more cost effective services across the board it means we can spread the limited budget for transport further.