Mr. Tim Gaston:

This follows on from my answer on the roll-out of integrated ticketing Leap card equipment. The same machine that reads the Leap card also reads the free travel pass. Across most public transport, we already know the number of free travel pass users who are boarding versus people who are using purchased Leap cards, cash or other tickets.

The situation is not as empirical as the Senator suggested. For public transport, all that we need to know is that it is a free travel pass. The data that we gathered will not be disaggregated into the types of pass that have been issued. That is entirely within the gift of the Department of Social Protection to determine. It is not something that public transport wants to get into. In fact, public transport has no right to know why that person is entitled to free travel, just that he or she is, if the Senator understands what I mean.