Mr. Andy Harkness:

The National Transport Authority has a wide range of functions, including responsibility for the regulation and development of the State’s public transport services and their integration with land use planning; operation of the State’s integrated public transport ticketing system; and regulation of taxis and vehicle clamping. The authority is the main conduit for the provision of State funding to operators of public transport. The authority’s income in 2018 amounted to €504.9 million. Expenditure amounted to €504.3 million, resulting in a surplus for the year of just under €600,000. Oireachtas grants to the authority in 2018 totalled €544 million. The bulk of this was passed on to transport operators in the form of public service obligation, PSO, funding to subsidise the cost of public transport, or was provided as capital grants for the development or acquisition of public transport assets.

Since 2017, the authority has been building up its own fleet of buses, which it assigns to public transport operators. The buses are recognised as fixed assets on the authority’s statement of financial position. In 2018, the authority added new buses to the fleet at a cost of €84 million, and received transfers from Dublin Bus of buses of varying ages, with a combined depreciated value of €12.4 million. The carrying value of the whole fleet at the end of 2018 was just under €116 million. The authority developed the integrated ticketing system, better known as the Leap card system, in co-operation with the main public transport operators. The authority maintains and operates the system, collecting fares and distributing them to the operators in line with agreed apportionment rules. It recovers its own costs of operation of the system from the transport operators. Leap card fare revenues collected in 2018 amounted to €320 million, which was up almost 16% from 2017. The revenues do not appear as income of the authority.

The Comptroller and Auditor General certified the 2018 financial statements on 30 June 2019 and issued a clear audit opinion.