Ms Anne Graham:

We would not really seek to be market-led. Obviously, where we have the greatest population we have the largest benefit or potential for using public transport and moving more people to sustainable transport. However, we are very conscious we must be careful to focus not just on the areas of high population but that we also need to provide, as I said, the social benefit associated with public transport. We therefore need to balance it between where the cost is lower because we can get some return in the form of fare revenue, but also ensure we have, through our Local Link services, the widest spread possible of delivery of services for rural Ireland. Thus, it is about balancing the cost associated with it as well as the social benefit we can get and it is about putting some kind of formula across that that will allow us to prioritise. It is not easy to do because obviously our ambition is to get services all around the country but we must continue to prioritise.

On new rail infrastructure, we as an authority fund the infrastructure associated with the greater Dublin area only. We do transport strategies, statutorily for the Dublin region but on a non-statutory basis with the local authorities for the regional cities. We can therefore comment on what is required in the metropolitan areas where infrastructure is concerned. The infrastructure that is there can be built on and can be built to deliver better services in terms of the existing infrastructure, with some small interventions particularly in the metropolitan area.

On better integration between rail and bus services, that is the core of the work we do, by means of ensuring any new bus services we are providing feed into rail services and vice versa. We are involved in looking not just at the bus services but also, because we contract the rail services as well, we work with the different operators to ensure we get better integration between those.

I will pass over to Mr. Creegan for a comment on the active travel jobs.