Mr. Ray Hernan:

I thank the committee for inviting us here today to discuss the topic of rural public transport, rural connectivity and the key role that Bus Éireann plays in providing those services, now and into the future.

Bus Éireann is committed to providing a range of public transport services outside Dublin in close partnership with our stakeholders. We have been proudly serving communities throughout Ireland since 1987 and I am pleased to inform the committee that tomorrow, 2 February, marks the 30th anniversary of our service.

Having grown up in a small rural village in Galway, I am personally very aware of the critical role that public transport must play in such communities. Ireland is a small country with a low population density that is very geographically dispersed. Public transport solutions need to reflect the way we choose to live. The fundamental principles of our approach to delivering public transport is to deliver social and economic inclusion and balanced regional development, working in partnership with our public transport stakeholders and local communities.

As a company working every day in rural and urban communities, Bus Éireann provides direct employment to 2,600 employees throughout the country through its network of drivers, stations and depot facilities. In addition to this, Bus Éireann works closely with its base of suppliers throughout the country. We contract in over €110 million from small locally based private transport service providers, making Bus Éireann the largest customer of the indigenous private sector in Ireland. The school transport scheme is a very good example of rural mobility and rural modal shift, providing sustainable employment in both an urban and rural setting.

At Bus Éireann, we believe that there are some basic building blocks that are fundamental to the integrated backbone network of services that we provide. It is the national network of services provided within available funding and resources that makes mobility possible for all our rural or urban passengers. The partnership that we have with private operators is essential in the delivery of our transport solutions. Equally, the journeys that these operators undertake on both schools transport and scheduled services give them a base from which to provide other community transport services in rural settings outside schools hours. This is a successful and sustainable approach to rural and community based employment and is a model of excellent public private partnership.

Within our road passenger network, we have more than 1.2 million different origin and destination combinations and more than 10,000 bus stops in both urban and rural settings. We provide city services in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford and we also provide town services in Sligo, Athlone, Dundalk, Navan and Balbriggan. We provide commuter services that link practically every town in Ireland, and this is particularly important in locations where there is no rail link.

Our passenger growth was a strong 6% last year, having carried over 39 million journeys on top of 40 million school journeys.

With the assistance of increased funding from the NTA, new higher frequency services have been added last year into Limerick, Galway and Cork which, together with new higher capacity fleet, have helped to deliver passenger growth of almost 9% across these provincial cities, helping the regeneration of these local economies. We are also extremely proud of our enhanced services on the M3 corridor, in particular, locations such as Delvin, Athboy, Trim, Batterstown, and Dunshaughlin, all of which now give greater access to local educational, employment and health facilities within the wider region.

On rural public transport connectivity, we have analysed best practice rural mobility solutions for regions with similar population dispersions in Norway, Finland and rural areas of Flanders in Belgium. All successful solutions are based on layered networks of public transport services, where the regularly scheduled passenger transport services, such as those provided by Bus Éireann, are interlinked with the more semi-scheduled or demand-responsive services such as those provided by Rural Link, other rural bus enterprises, taxi service providers and private car owners. When these services are integrated efficiently and effectively, one gets real local, regional and inter-regional connectivity for rural communities.

In appreciating the value of connectivity, Bus Éireann would be supportive of a proposal to facilitate a town hub and spoke approach where Local Link would interchange into the backbone network provided by Bus Éireann. This would make best use of the NTA investment in Bus Éireann services in recent years, and would be focused on increasing efficiency and effectiveness in the overall public transport offering outside Dublin. Such an initiative would require State investment beyond "steady state" in accessible fleet, bus stops, bus shelters and station facilities where appropriate and also in customer-facing technology and service back up.

Building on the steady growth of public transport usage that has occurred over the past two to three years outside the Dublin metropolitan area, Bus Éireann would be supportive of any initiative that increased public transport usage for towns across Ireland. In total, almost 200 new or enhanced services were introduced last year, including the significantly improved services launched earlier this week in Athlone town which has been funded by the NTA. All of these will help drive real modal shift. More of these initiatives are planned. Approval and funding for a full schedule of enhanced services has been submitted to the NTA for 2017. These will be delivered, despite the current financial crisis facing Bus Éireann at this time.

On that particular subject of our own financial predicament, I advised staff last week that the scale of our 2016 losses were forecasted to be in the range of €8 million to €9 million. With the resultant depletion of our reserves, this has put the business at risk of becoming insolvent before the end of the year. I am extremely disappointed that the trade unions have refused our invitation to meet to discuss measures which, I believe, must be taken. Their failure to engage leaves management with no option but to proceed with the necessary changes to safeguard Bus Éireann in the best interests of our customers, staff and stakeholders.

To facilitate meaningful engagement between staff representatives and the company, management is not proposing to implement any measures outlined in my 18 January letter until 20 February. I would like to use this opportunity to once again urge unions to accept our invitation and begin talks urgently. Implementation of measures from 20 February is critical to safeguarding the maximum number of viable jobs and avoiding the risk of insolvency. Not to do so would be reckless and irresponsible.