Ms Anne Graham:

The free travel pass is accepted on all local link services. It would also be accepted on any additional local link services. There would be no charge to free travel pass holders on local link services, either the existing ones or any proposed new services.

In terms of fair competition on the intercity corridors, we still believe there is additional capacity on those corridors. There was 61% passenger growth in a short period of years and during a downturn. As a result, we believe the routes are very successful and we are particularly pleased that there has been no impact on rail services. We also believe that the additional licences have grown the public transport market and resulted in fewer people using cars to travel, for example, to travel from Dublin to Cork.

In terms of decisions that are made, it is the operators that decide what they want to deliver on the motorway network. The private operators that came forward with the Expressway services made the decision to go into that market and we accepted in half the cases that there was demand for those services. Bus Éireann could have looked at any stage to provide those kinds of services as well but chose not to do so in many cases. In terms of competition, we respond to the applications we get and we decide whether there is a demand for the services or not. However, it really is up to the operators to come forward with their plans and licence applications.