Mr. Ray Hernan:

In terms of the new timetable and services through Cavan-Monaghan, we recently increased the frequency on route 30. There will be increased frequency on route 32 also. We have also increased the frequency on the 109X route. Therefore, there has been a significant increase in capacity. There are no plans to add direct services from, say, Monaghan town to Dublin but services are flowing from the Donegal-Letterkenny area through Cavan and Monaghan with a significant uplift in frequencies. I hope this will deal with many of the capacity issues in this area because passenger numbers are growing.

With regard to the bus stop at the Mater Hospital, we have received a large amount of feedback. We also received feedback on the challenge being created for those visiting or attending the hospital. We are considering increasing the number of services that will stop at the Mater Hospital. I cannot commit to reverting to all the routes and frequencies that serviced the Mater in the past but we are trying to strike a balance between using bus lanes to reduce the journey times and trying to achieve connectivity with key locations, such as the hospital. That is under review. I expect some changes to be made in the current year.

The Deputy asked many questions about schools. An initiative last year that seemed to work well was the introduction of a dedicated line for all public representatives to contact us with any queries about schools. That was communicated a number of times last year. We are doing that again this year. I am not too sure whether it has occurred yet. I will confirm that the list of mobile numbers for all our regional managers will be provided. It was successful last year and seems to have reduced the number of queries. We were able to speed up the response times as a result.

We have also increased resources for telephone communication with parents. With the approval of the Department, we are expanding the resource applied to the telephone lines between now and September of this year. I would be disappointed if we did not see a stepped improvement on last year, which saw a significant improvement on the previous years. If there is any issue with Members not receiving information on the direct lines to our regional managers, they should please let me know. I know, however, that we sent the numbers to Members' Oireachtas email addresses and local constituency email addresses last year.