Mr. Frank Allen:

I will deal with Deputy O'Keeffe's questions, the first of which related to ticket checkers. It is an objective of Iarnród Éireann to have more on-board staff. In fact, that is part of the discussions taking place with trade unions in terms of change management in the organisation although with a different focus. Rather than checking the tickets, the aim would be to provide a service to the customer. It will address some of the points the Deputy made about anti-social behaviour. It is not a serious issue but having somebody on a train who is a presence and can respond to queries makes sense. I support it and the management want to do it.

Greater use of electronic ticketing is a good thing and I am supportive of it. The Deputy is right in identifying that the removal of ticket checkers without having a presence on the train leads to us missing out on something. Iarnród Éireann wants to have a better presence on trains but it wants to do it through providing a better service rather than checking tickets. There are rigorous processes in place to check for fare evasion because for the decent fare-paying passenger, it is entirely unfair to have to sit next to somebody who is cheating. The resources that have been committed to rigorous revenue protection have increased over time. This will continue to be the case because it is only fair on the person who has paid for his or her ticket that the person next to him or her who should have paid does so and if he or she has not paid, he or she is caught. There will be changes in terms of on-board staffing.

The Deputy described us as having divided ourselves into infrastructure management and railway undertaking. Be assured that it was not the intention of Iarnród Éireann to do that. There are EU rules about separating the infrastructure manager from the railway operator and those rules make perfect sense in continental countries where there could be a German railway going into France and where separating them out made perfect sense. Those rules apply to all member countries. The initiative Iarnród Éireann took in terms of that separation of management responsibility was the absolute minimum required to meet the letter of the requirements from the EU. It did not really result in any duplication of senior management. In fact, there has been an effort at some shared services so that they would be provided to the infrastructure management side and the railway undertaking side. The Deputy asked whether that change resulted in value for money. The intention of it was part of the EU Single Market. It was done for reasons of compliance rather than value for money but every effort was made to make sure it avoided any wasteful duplication. I do not see anybody coming to board meetings where one person says one thing and another person says the same thing from the other company. I do not think it has done that. It has been of no benefit to us but we have to do it.