Mr. Ray Hernan:

I will speak specifically about what I regard as the structural changes and I will take a very simple example. We have a bus fleet for the PSO offer and the Expressway service. We have a maintenance policy whereby we maintain all our vehicles during the day and only during weekdays from Monday to Friday. My view is this is when they should be on the road and not in the garage. We are now in a situation where, despite investment, we do not have the maximum number of buses available in our existing fleet to meet peak-time requirements. Ultimately, this means that we have to hire what I accept are more expensive buses. For me, this is an absolute inefficiency. We are going back to very basic business sense, which is to maximise the availability of the bus fleet during peak times and get as many people as possible on them at those times. My overall objective is that with improved ticketing technology - and we have a poor ticketing system in Bus Éireann at present - we can encourage more people to use our bus fleet during off-peak times when invariably they are half empty. With regard to trying to drive revenue, we need to be much more creative in the fares we offer on Expressway and PSO routes to encourage more people to use our buses during off-peak periods. This is a simple example of the efficiencies we can achieve. If we create more value for money through these measures, then for the same subvention we can offer more services throughout the country.