Ms Margaret Malone:

On the Local Link, one of the queries about the evening service was the 11 p.m. finish and whether that was fair on rural communities. The span we are seeing in the applications is services running from 6 p.m. until midnight. We will have to see how it plays out. It is a pilot and we are looking closely at what the patronage will be like. It will be important for us to see as many people as possible using these services in order to build a case for continuing them into next year. To date, feedback has been that 11 p.m. probably works for quite a lot of people who are not using the services, particularly for going out for a drink but also going shopping, visiting relatives or socialising. We will play along with it and see how it goes.

On potential downtime in certain bus usage around the country, from the perspective of Local Link and rural transport, we have many small operators who are on contract with us to deliver services during the day but also on contract with Bus Éireann to deliver school services in the morning and early afternoon. We see many small operators around the country using and getting use out of their buses on an all-day basis.