Ms Anne Graham:

What we have not got a commitment for in the future is the operational funding. As I have said before, we oavailable it would enable us to plan better in terms of the delivery of services, and that is someperate off an annual budget. In our world we would love to see multi-annual funding on the operational side but it is not available to us at the moment. If that were made thing we would like to see. We operate within the budgets that we are given and we plan as best we can within those budgets.

In terms of the budgetary process, we will be putting in our application for additional funding associated with whatever additional services we want to put in, and whatever fare proposals we want to make as well. For anything that increases the operational cost, we go through the annual process with our Departments and try to make the best case for the funding that we need to deliver services. That is the situation that we operate in now. In an ideal world, multi-annual funding for subsidy would be very helpful.

My colleague, Mr. Creegan, will talk about the capital side of BusConnects.