Mr. Jim Meade:

There is capacity on trains for bikes, but not enough. We hear that, regularly. I am happy to say the new trains, the order for which we placed will be electric and battery-electric and very environmentally friendly, will have much more capacity and multipurpose space in order that we can carry more. There always will be a limit to what we can carry. The examples the Senator gave are very good, but we are not yet in that space. As the demand grows, we may move into that space.

One of the nice things about the new spec we have put on the trains is that it is modular based. If there was a big shift over the coming five to ten years to bikes and we became similar to Amsterdam, one could create more space quite easily. The train would not have to be remodelled.

We already do some off-peak pricing on the Internet. Pre-Covid, we did that kind of pricing between Galway and Limerick and we saw a massive increase in activity on that route, especially in student travel, because we made the price very competitive. We work with the NTA on that. It, ultimately, sets the pricing structure but, with its agreement, every now and again we offer those kinds of incentives to entice people to our lightly-used services.