Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the NTA on the free Leap card initiative for children over the summer. It was a very good initiative and I saw from being on buses that people used it. Has the NTA carried out any qualitative analysis of uptake and registering of cards? Anecdotally, I know many people bought their children Leap cards and registered them. It was a brilliant initiative and one I would love to see extended. I would love to see free travel for all schoolgoing children because if parents were saving €20 or €30 per child per week, they would switch even though it is inconvenient. It is a cultural change, as the witnesses know, to go down and get the No. 11 bus to Clonskeagh rather than to hop in the car. In my part of Dublin, which is very urban and in which people use public transport, there was an increase in uptake. What sort of figures has the NTA got from it and what is the plan for the future?