Mr. Aidan Murphy:

With regard to County Meath, as the Deputy is aware, we have had some issues on the services, particularly the new service that was provided. That is regrettable and one of the main factors involved has been the very high levels of absenteeism the company has experienced in recent months. In certain instances, absenteeism has been up to 14% on a daily basis. However, there has been some improvement in recent times. I understand there were no service issues yesterday and I hope this is the start of a better trend. I confirmed in the meeting earlier that conditions around rosters were finally agreed yesterday at the Workplace Relations Commission. They will be finalised by next Monday and a notice period of two weeks will mean they will all be implemented by 17 November. I am confident we are progressing and there are very good discussions and co-operation between management and staff representatives on resolving the issues. We regret the issues this has caused for customers, particularly in County Meath, with the installation of the new service. When fully operational, the new service will be a fantastic improvement on the previous service.

With regard to drivers, we are committed to giving voluntary severance terms for 120 drivers under the Labour Court recommendation. Until now, a very small number of drivers have been provided with this facility simply because we could not do this owing to the levels of absenteeism we have been experiencing. This is part of the discussions we had with the public representatives that, as we improve-----