Mr. Dermot O'Leary:

In June this year, €800,000 was spent on a consultancy firm that is well known in this city. Said firm is at the top of the list in my presentation. In saying that, I have not named it. That type of money is being spent and it would be far better if it were spent on funding transport services. If I neglected to respond to any of the Deputy's questions, she can indicate that to me.

Deputy Barry asked about rail services. The rail service is quite simple for us. Even Professor Reynolds-Feighan, with all her knowledge, struggled to name a railway that is making money. The only railways in the world that are making money, and this is mentioned in our presentation, are those run by state companies in Germany and France - I mentioned Transdev - that step outside their borders and tender on the premise that they are private companies tendering for state contracts. That is the flaw in the relevant European legislation, Regulation (EC) No. 1371/2007. The latter allows French companies to heavily subsidise their industry in at home and then tender for contracts here and be paid with Irish taxpayers' money. Our rail network is underfunded. I heard that the chief executive officer of Irish Rail appeared before the committee the other day and he gave a good outline of where the shortfall is. The subvention has dropped by approximately €98 million during the recession. Line speeds will be reduced. I do not want to overplay safety concerns or make it sound as if we are scaremongering around safety standards, but there is a fear with respect to the standard Irish Rail has obtained and maintained over the last decade and more in terms of it being accident free, and hopefully that statistic will remain the case, that instead of increasing line speeds, as Mr. Franks spoke about that day, that they will be reduced. That is a concern.

Deputy Barry also mentioned the issue of pensions. Again, as covered in our presentation, the amount of €125 a week is a meagre pension after some of our members have spent €40,000 of their money paying towards it. We have been told that the pension schemes, of which there are two in the CIE group, are in trouble. I will defer to the Chairman on this one as it is a matter that is before the Workplace Relations Commission. I will not go into the detail of that but there are problems.

The Deputy referred to Bus Éireann being fully compliant. This is also covered in my presentation. There are two cases that we know of recently - this is on the public record and the court records - and there may be others. One of those cases arose in Donegal and led to a company being fined by Mayo District Court for a breach of driving regulations. In other words, the drivers were operating outside the regulated hours and this led to safety concerns. Only this year, another coach company - I will not name it but this is a matter of public record - found itself in the same position. It is grand to have regulations, of which we have plenty, but we do not have anybody policing them, apart from the NTA fining private coach companies in Tullamore recently at the National Ploughing Championships; I suppose they are now called the national tractors association. We would have a concern that people who are supposed to police that side of our regulations are not doing so. I believe I have covered most, if not all, of the members' questions and my colleagues can help me out in that respect.