Ms Anne Graham:

We would at least like the cost of operation to be either the same or less. We would not want to see it being higher than the cost of the service operated by Dublin Bus. We, therefore, expected to see a reduction in costs and that is what we envisaged. Because we did not have any experience of what it might be in the lead-up to engaging in competitive tendering, we looked at other countries to see what the savings might be when one introduced competition into a market in which there was a monopoly. At that stage the range was between 5% and 30% in the savings indicated in the research we carried out.