Mr. Ray Hernan:

In terms of more resources, from the beginning of next week a new telephony system will be in place that will, hopefully, allow more issues to be addressed immediately. Instead of having individual regions trying to deal with queries we have installed a more centralised telephony service that can then transfer calls to people who are available to answer calls. From time to time one area might be more busy than another. The new telephony system will allow us to utilise resources across the whole country more effectively, hopefully. Testing of the system will be completed this week.

I shall highlight the practicalities of some of the issues. All families have received an email notification to apply for tickets. The deadline for payments is 28 July. At this point we know that only 60% of those email communications have been opened. It has been our experience that the deadline will have passed yet a significant proportion of the families will not have replied. We could put in a very hard deadline of 28 July but we would have absolute mayhem after that date. As has already started this week, the first reminder email has gone out to all of those people who have not opened their emails to please do so and to please pay if they have not done so. A reminder email is issued each week between now and the end of the month. Beyond that date we allow a grace period.

That is when we get into a very tight timeline of issuing tickets and trying to ensure that we have availability on buses. As the operator of the scheme, we focus on the people who are eligible first and foremost. We do not specifically focus on the concessionary tickets. We ensure that all eligible pupils have a bus seat or access to transport to reach school, assuming they are eligible. Many of the challenges emanate from constituents because the eligible number will increase or decrease each year which, in turn, influences the number of concessionary places that are available. I shall explain the issues that this situation causes. One might have a space one year but not the next year. Our policy is to very much focus on the availability of places for eligible people rather than availability for the total number of people who have expressed an interest in a bus service.

Many points have been raised about local matters. We will contact the members directly about them. We will liaise with the clerk of the committee to ensure that we cover all of the issues.

A question was asked about eco vehicles by the lady who is no longer here. We acquired new buses two years ago and all of them comply with the highest eco standards applied by the European Commission. The last number of tranches of new vehicles all comply with those standards. However, there is not an overall policy in place that requires vehicles being used to provide a service, be it directly by ourselves or subcontract, to meet the most recent standards. I can say, on behalf of Bus Éireann, that buses that have been acquired by ourselves to provide a direct service meet those standards.