Mr. Ultan Courtney:

With regard to pay, pensions and competition, Mr. Aidan Murphy covered much of that. It is the same for us. We must ensure that ultimately we have an efficient and cost effective system of work. That includes the cost of labour and the cost of capital. We are focused on retaining employees and having good, high quality employees who can provide an efficient service to the customers. At the same time we want them to stay with us as their employer of choice. On average, most people stay with us. People are retained in Dublin Bus.

We are confident that we can compete with anybody who wishes to compete with us, but we need support in that. We need support from the Oireachtas and the Labour Court with regard to applications for sectoral employment agreements or employment regulation orders whereby there are policy decisions on the minimum floors which the State believes should not be breached because in those circumstances one always worries about safety and the concerns and standards of drivers. We have very high standard drivers and high safety standards and we are absolutely confident we can maintain those. There have been discussions and agreements about that and they are being processed at present.

We can deal with that. The most important thing is that we have to make change. I do not know how long I am doing change but at this stage it must be over 30 years. Where there are trade unions one has to sit down, make agreements, negotiate and do deals. It does not mean one does not fall out or have difficulties. Nobody wants to have them, but one does and at the end of the day one has to come to a fair agreement. We have a responsibility as an employer, as a commercial State company, to be a good and fair employer. Our employees are very valued. They are good people.

Reference was made to BusConnects. It is an investment in the bus network and I think BusConnects is great. Dublin Bus is also great because it is bus overground. One does not have to do a whole lot with it other than to provide the buses. One of the things we did this year was to retain 30 buses that were due to be retired. We are keeping them in service to try to provide more service where there is congestion and people end up waiting at the bus stop. Those people are trying to go to work and to engineer the economy to make money. It is a social backstop as well although it is still seen as cool in the sense that the person in the wheelchair who wants to go to work is as entitled to get on the bus as the able-bodied person. We work hard to do that. Our entire fleet is 100% accessible because we have been working on it for some time. It does happen occasionally - it is not good when it does - that a person has to wait because the wheelchair access is being taken up by another wheelchair or there is a dispute over buggies. That is something we have to work on and see what we can do. I have been reminded again today of how important it is to provide a social service to everybody, and not only a social service but an economic service for the person who is going to work.

Short-term congestion troubled me when I worked on the buses 30 years ago and it is still troubling me but there have been huge advances since in terms of the quality bus corridors and bus lanes. We have a state-of-the-art control centre that works with the Garda to try to keep them open and to keep the traffic moving. I could go on all night about the separation of bikes and buses. We all know it would be ideal to separate those who walk from those who are on bikes and those who are in cars. At the moment, the most important thing is to provide buses. We are in discussion with the NTA about another 30 buses and the renewal of the fleet.