Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will move on from this. I remind members of where we can achieve results. Some years ago we had only one of the 17 education and training boards getting its accounts in within three months of the year end. We brought them all up, went through them one by one and put four of the ETBs in front of us. Hey presto, the following year every one of the ETBs' accounts were in on time. The committee's involvement does help, with the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Having to answer to the Committee of Public Accounts does help. Let us use the bit of influence that we have. No. 2522 is agreed.

No. 2523 is correspondence received from Anne Graham, chief executive, National Transport Authority, following up with information requested at our meeting on 1 October. I will first refer to the headings. There is some shocking information in this, which follows through on the request for more information. Some of it is routine and great information is provided but there is one issue I wish to highlight. Ms Graham gives a breakdown of: the money spent on advertising campaigns for bus shelters; the cost of the Go-Ahead Ireland project vis-à-visDublin Bus; the roll-out of accessibility infrastructure, a list of the towns where that has been completed in the past year or two and the ones that are currently in planning; the proposal to carry out accessibility works in Carlow train station; and the payment by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection for free travel. We had been asking about the issue of free travel. There are five pages on that and we will come back to it in detail because it is connected to the public services card. We will note and publish the correspondence but we are not finished with the issue of the public services card yet. There is a lot of correspondence coming in from individuals on that issue arising out of the committee's discussions here and our meeting with the Department last week.