Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I reckon the cost would be measured in the hundreds of millions of euro.

The unions involved in this dispute have pinpointed a potential €9 million to €10 million that could be used to address the crisis and avert the strike. There are two measures, one from the Department and one from the National Transport Authority, NTA.

The first measure is that Bus Éireann would be compensated for the towns and villages that it services when it goes off motorways on intercity routes when they are competing with private operators. For example, it cost €440,000 to bring in private operators to serve the towns and villages that were lost when Bus Éireann stopped going off-motorway on the Dublin to Cork route. So the suggestion is that it would be compensated for the other intercity routes.

The other proposal is that if the free travel pass percentage payment were to be increased from 40% to 80%, those two initiatives would produce a sum of money that could avert the crisis, avert the strike and avert the potential of a company going to the wall by May which would cost hundreds of millions of euro. Would Ms Graham care to comment on those two proposals?