Ms Bairbre Nic Aongusa:

As members may be aware, the Department of Transport recently announced a fare reduction scheme that would provide a 20% average fare reduction on all train and bus services managed by the National Transport Authority on its behalf. That scheme does not extend to any other subsidised transport service managed by the Department of Transport or to the offshore island schemes overseen by our Department. The Department is not opposed to looking at this but we have concerns that retrospectively applying a fair reduction scheme to contracts procured might cause some issues for private and subsidised operators. Our main concern is to protect the existing subsidised services and we need to be careful that we do not introduce a scheme that would undermine existing contracts or affect the ongoing public procurement process. The Minister has written to the Attorney General seeking advice on this issue. That advice will be made available to us, we hope, in the coming weeks.