Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the clarification we have received. I am concerned, however, that the delegates have not yet identified a specific budget for the pilot. They have only said they are going to set aside the necessary resources. They do not know specifically how much grant aid they are going to give to the community operator and how much will go towards the insurance of the particular operators. If there are 34 operators - 17 community and 17 commercial - are 34 insurance premiums going to be paid? Are 34 different types of subvention going to be paid? Based on this, the pilot scheme could cost €400,000 or €500,000. These are quick figures based on some of the figures that have been bandied about. Will the resources have to come from the 2019 allocation and thus be diverted from somewhere else? That would be a worry because, to be fair, the delegates are operating quite efficiently on a tight budget already. The delegates expressed a desire, which I will not question, to get the service up and running in a timely fashion. They also have many other projects that they are trying to get off the ground or with which they are involved, including BusConnects and metro north. Do they have the capacity? Has the authority received additional human resources in recent years to implement all the schemes it is trying to implement?

Before I make my final point, I wish to raise an issue we have experienced many times. Deputy Ó Cuív gave an example of it. It took 12 months for an additional Bus Éireann route on the 115 service to be approved in Mullingar from the time the initial application was made by Bus Éireann. There is therefore a legitimate concern about the ability to roll this out in a timely and efficient manner. There are concerns that the NTA has not quantified the budget per seand that the funding will have to be taken from what is already allocated. As previous speakers have said, it has the capacity to work. I acknowledge that, and there is flexibility there. However, my transport co-ordination unit spans Longford and Westmeath, two large counties in which there are many rural settlements and villages. What the NTA is saying today is that only two of those areas will be piloted, and at best-----