Mr. Tim Gaston:

App-based DRT or smart DRT as we are calling it, is a project we launched recently. We have just appointed a dedicated project manager to manage it. We hope to go to public procurement shortly for the provider of the system. The Deputy mentioned the branding of a particular taxi firm. There are some similarities but also some differences. I will take a few minutes to explain the vision we have for it.

Customers will download an app onto a smart mobile phone or will telephone the office. The journey they want to take will be registered by the computer system and there will be a small fleet of minibuses or low-floor buses - ideally, these will be electric when we can get them rolled out - in a given geographical region. The region could be part of a county or an area where there are not sufficient regular services. It is to enable people to do the things they want to do. This is for dispersed populations. The fleet of minibuses will be moving around in that area. When customers register that they want to go from A to B, the system will send them back an offer. For example, it will tell them they cannot be collected exactly where they are but they can be picked up at the crossroads 300 m away and that they cannot be collected at 2 p.m. but they can be collected at 1.45 p.m. It is shared mobility, so customers will get onto the minibus with other people who are doing similar journeys in that region. It may not take customers exactly where they want to go, but it will take them to a point within a given tolerance, which might be 200 m or 300 m. Customers will have approximately five minutes to accept that offer. They will have already pre-loaded their payment card details onto the app so there is no need for a payment process when the vehicle turns up. Customer are told that the driver, Tim, will meet them at this point and the driver is told that Anne, the customer, will be at this point. From that point on, the journey will be shared mobility. This system works well in other parts of the world.

I visited England and saw two different schemes that are working on this basis. They come at a price. As the Deputy will imagine, the cost of the driver and vehicle is relatively high, but we think it is a good solution for providing a service to fill the gaps where regular services would simply be too expensive because of the dispersed nature of the population. We are planning to run three pilot projects, one that is very rural; one that might be semi-rural, for example on the outskirts of a town or that includes a town; and one that is semi-urban. We will learn from those three pilots and then we will have a better feel for the cost of running that kind of system.

It will work for people who can use their mobile phones, but will still work - this is where the transportation control unit, TCU, network comes in - for people who cannot use an app. They can still phone and the operator in the TCU will input the journey and give the customer the necessary information about possibilities for being picked up and dropped off. We think it is a good solution but we want to trial it to see how it works in rural Ireland, how people take to it and how solid the technology is. We hope to go to the market for that this year and to run pilots next year. We think it has good potential.