Mr. Ray Coyne:

The first question was for me. I thank Deputy Murphy for her question about buggies and wheelchair space. The facility has been there since 1999 when we bought our first low-floor vehicle. Our most recently purchased 450 vehicles since 2013 now have both a buggy space and a wheelchair space. There have been considerations at Government level and we fed into that in terms of what we could do to address the problem. It is very complex. We also feed into the EU, into DG MOVE, in terms of what the considerations are in Ireland from an operator's point of view. The key issues include legislation, which is a matter for the Government in terms of what it chooses to do. We offer our view of the current scenarios and if something was not legislated for we would outline the complications that arise. If that was legislated for today what one would find is that all of our buses are full in the morning peak and generally in the evening peak so one would have to move six people off a full vehicle to allow for wheelchair access. All the buses have the space but six people would have to be moved off the bus which is difficult to do. Those who would have to move would have to leave the bus and that would involve complexities around refunds and which six people would come off the bus. I do not say the issues are insurmountable but we would have to face very difficult challenges if legislation were to specify that a disabled person is fully entitled to the access space.

We also have a number of users whose parents carry a special card that we give them for children with a disability who are in a buggy. It is not a case of the buggy being full of shopping, as the child requires it for transport. Moving such a child from an access space would give rise to concern. A number of people who have mobility permits also use the space. Not every seat on a vehicle is accessible on the lower saloon as step entry is required for seats at the back. Asking such a person to move would require them to go to a space that is not accessible to them, for example, upstairs. Those are some of the complicating issues. An alternative is to make sure the space is constantly available, because that removes those factors. One would have to block that space off from general users. One will still be faced with the situation of there only being one space. What that would do is create a 6.5% capacity requirement and in order to counterbalance that one would need to invest 6.5% in the fleet. Our current fleet is 1,000 so it would mean 65 vehicles to replace that capacity with capital expenditure of between €20 million and €30 million but there would also be current expenditure which would be around €20 million a year.