Ms Anne Graham:

I am just getting to that. Reliability is another issue customers certainly rely on, probably ahead of fare sensitivity. The absolute minimum level of service is three services per day, seven days a week. That would be for very small settlements. In many cases the frequency is a lot higher but that is the minimum service we want for the smallest settlements. As the Deputy asked about evidence, I will elaborate. The proposals in the Connecting Ireland programme are based on empirical evidence about population, travel demand, looking at the statistics that are available through the census about where people are travelling to and where they want to go. We then sense-check that with the local authorities, our Local Link partners and our bus operators, to see if that is the appropriate level of service to start off with and that the appropriate places are being served at the frequency that the evidence shows is necessary. That is how we have commenced. The good thing about bus services is that they can be dynamically improved if we have the funding available, and it can be easily done through our operators.

The Deputy asked us a question on figures on subvention. I do not have the Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann subvention figures, but I can obtain them and pass them on. We do not necessarily drive what we are doing on a per capitabasis, or even necessarily on a cost basis. We do not necessarily look at the net cost. We look at serving the demand by providing the necessary service is. From the evidence that has been heard, people are responding so we know that the demand is there and we are delivering on it. Unless we found that a service has a very low usage we would not consider amending or removing it. We have not had to do so in the past five years, I think. In all cases where we have improved the service, the public have responded.