Mr. Dermot O'Leary:

There are a lot of private coaches operating into Dublin from the Louth area. They compliment the State companies, by and large.

On restoring confidence in public transport, face coverings in one way. It is important that the new cleaning regime is kept going. Our submission notes the fear that people will move away from public transport to cars. Our submission referred to an Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service report commissioned by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in 2017 put the cost of congestion in the greater Dublin area alone at €358 million. We cannot go back. The Covid crisis demonstrated what is possible when there are empty streets. To be fair to Owen Keegan in Dublin City Council, whom I am not a fan of and he knows that, there was a move towards pedestrian and cycleways during the crisis. Investment will have to be at the fore to bring in extra capacity in buses.

Buses can be purchased much quicker than rail coaches. Capacity is what is required.

As I said to Deputy Lawless, we need to elongate the peak travel period. Some 46% of journeys are made at peak times, and that peak has to be elongated. We wrote to the previous Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, and other party leaders suggesting that school and college opening times and retail be staggered. We also made that point in our submission. That was partially done in the second phase when some retail units did not open until 10.30 a.m. That is the type of thinking that is needed. As I keep repeating, stakeholder involvement is vital. There is no point in dictating down the chain because that begets a reaction which is usually negative. What we hope to achieve today is the clear message that the stakeholder forum needs to be established immediately so that we can get down to restoring confidence in public transport and dealing with capacity issues, as well as elongating peak travel periods.