Mr. Aidan Murphy:

Bus Éireann is fully committed to achieving the targets on sustainability. For example, we are involved in a pilot for the complete electrification of Athlone town through the use of electric vehicles. This will give rise to a large number of learnings. We are also introducing hydrogen bus trials and so on. Bus Éireann is in a bit of a difficult situation because we run a lot of long-range services for which current technology, for example, in the context of battery life, would not be suitable. While battery technology overall is undergoing significant developments and there are lots of suggestions that in the next number of years this will increase significantly, at the moment we must move to Euro 6 engines, which are a very clean form of a diesel engine. All of our future vehicles are along those lines. For distance travel, hydrogen is the only possibility at present.

On the broader question on public transport, as Mr. Allen and Mr. Courtney said, it will be a challenge to attract people back onto public transport. Levels of mobility have increased significantly and it is very clear that people are using their cars more and using them singly because they will not buddy up due to the difficulties with the pandemic. That is going to be a factor. Will we see people cramming onto vehicles of the future? Mr. Allen mentioned the problems involved. It is difficult to see whether people will actually immediately adapt to that. There will need to be some measures to attract people back onto public transport as a safe form in the future. Certainly, opportunities arise to consider how much that can be done through a pricing mechanism.

From our perspective, there is another element. We operate the school transport system. It has been shown in other countries that if children are educated at a very early age to use public transport, they continue that pattern throughout their lives. This is a very important aspect that could actually change significantly the behaviours of society in the future.