Mr. Ultan Courtney:

I thank the Deputy for that excellent question. Dublin Bus has done extremely well in managing the Covid situation. We all found ourselves in a situation last year where we had to do things very differently. We quickly learned how to do that. Everybody across the various organisations, including the NTA and CIÉ, as well as financially, co-operated and worked really hard to get that right. We are currently operating to a 25% limit under level 5. That will not change unless the restriction level changes. We are currently reasonably comfortable that we can manage that. We are monitoring it daily and provide information to the NTA and the Department as to what is happening. We are currently running on the basis of a Saturday service and we can and will increase that as necessary. We hold back a certain number of buses which we plug into the various routes where demand arises. It is not perfect but it is a reasonably good show. As long as the numbers stay the way they are in terms of people going back to work, we should manage. Ultimately, it will be a policy decision for the Government in terms of the level of restrictions it wishes to have in place following advice from NPHET. We are in a position to be able to manage that situation.

The second part of the Deputy's question is the really positive part. He asked about the future. Obviously, we are not sure what the future will be. It probably will be a different version of what we had in the past. We are trying to plan to make bus journeys part of passengers' choice, whereby they can decide to walk, cycle or take the bus as part of their journey. We aim to provide a clean and efficient fleet for them. Customers want reliability, efficiency and to be taken to where they wish to go in a manner that suits them. We will try to do that. We have plans in place and are working with the Department and the NTA in particular to introduce those plans. BusConnects is a key part of that. It is a significant investment by the State to ensure we have a bus service that suits the needs of the greater Dublin area. It is a constantly changing need which we have to be constantly on top of. We are working closely with the NTA to do that. With all the things customers want, such as WiFi, bus charging, regular buses and clean buses, there has been a significant transformation in the service and we continue to push for that in the future.