Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are a couple of areas that I want to zone in on. Deputy Carey has already covered the licensing issue. There are good reasons for some aspects of licensing in order that it is not a free for all. That is being reasonably well handled. There are areas, from a rural perspective, where we would like to see a much quicker roll-out of some of the services. I know that when the powers that be look at it, they have to do so in terms of funding as well. Deputy Carey and I have been looking for a town service in Ennis for quite some time. I am sure that the industry would be ready to do it if given the go-ahead and the wherewithal. The biggest concern that I have is the lack of availability of drivers. This is not unique to the bus companies either.

I hear it from haulage companies and the Irish Road Haulage Association. While the witnesses have identified a model which, on the face of it looks like it could work, have they seen it done elsewhere? Do other countries do it? I am always concerned about solutions that involve binding somebody to a company for a period of time. That is hard to enforce and there is little recourse, having trained somebody, if they decide to head off. In terms of the health service, we have often talked about whether nurses and doctors should be required to remain here and I think the general wisdom is that is not entirely the best way to proceed. Has Mr. Crowley seen anything elsewhere?

I am conscious of Skillnet and of some of the apprenticeship organisations that do similar work to this in other sectors. Is there anything that could be done in our institutes of technologies, ITs, which are now becoming technological universities? Could links be created with some of the other bodies to ensure we have a system that would get people trained more quickly? It is not necessarily always young people who become bus drivers. It could be people coming to the end of a career in some other area. They may not be able to do the manual labour they have done previously and therefore move to bus services.

The State acted in the past when there was a shortage of people in the catering sector by establishing CERT, which started to develop skill sets in the hospitality sector. That was really successful. Is there a requirement to do something more? Should the State take on a greater role in providing a training programme for drivers and upskilling or reskilling? There seems to be plenty of availability and while it is a short-term measure to bring South African drivers here or convert the driving licences of Ukrainians, the vast bulk of Ukrainians who are here are women and children. The Ukrainian men who are here either came because of ill health or they got out of the country before the barriers came down. I do not know if that is necessarily the short-term solution either. I am interested to hearing Mr. Crowley's views on having a State-run driver programme. It worked well when there were no private operators. When we had only CIÉ and Bus Éireann there was an apprenticeship programme in place and people worked their way through that. Those companies are obviously not in a position to do that now because they are in a more competitive environment and bid for routes in the same way as the private companies do. I ask Mr. Crowley to flesh that out a little more.