Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of brief items. I am conscious Mr. Crowley has been there watching on screen the whole time and we have not had him in to speak. That tends to happen when someone is on a screen in the background and is staying quiet. They do not get to wave their hand at me as much. Did he want to come in on anything that was said? I am aware that people use the Wexford bus service and value it very much. People in Enniscorthy and Wexford town and so on are all very pleased to use it. Is there anything in the meeting on which he wanted to make an observation? I am afraid we are not hearing Mr. Crowley. Maybe he could dip out and try to log back in just in case. Even though his microphone symbol looks like it is on, he is not to be heard. Maybe we should not have tried that at all.

I note a couple of things. We have had a very good session. Even the four opening statements in themselves gave us a lot of information and stuff for us to discuss. One of our first meetings back in September will be with the Road Safety Authority, RSA, with Applus+ about national car tests, NCTs, but also about the National Driver Licence Service, NDLS. We are hoping to bring in that part of it and the whole driver testing system. We have lots of figures about driver testing and the difficulties there for everybody, even for a B licence let alone a D licence or anything else, and we can feed that in. There are other aspects. The witnesses touched on the social welfare system and it was referenced in the opening remarks from the CTTC, and other matters as well. I am probably not Dublin Bus's best customer in that I try to cycle to Leinster House as much as I can but we all use public transport and we all want to use public transport. I certainly know of the campaigns such as getting the 11 bus to run 24 hours, which would suit me perfectly, in terms of the universities. We have a shortage of taxis. We could get some more buses on the roads at night particularly for younger people working in jobs. They are working in not necessarily well paid jobs, or at the lower end of the scale for sure, in hospitality and retail and so on. They are spending a big chunk of their take-home pay on a taxi home when if the bus was running, it would be fantastic. Will Mr. Hann touch on any proposals for further night buses? Regarding the fleet, I know there are new buses coming but is the fleet ageing or getting younger? I still see buses that are relatively old in my neck of the woods. I used to be told on the 62 route that we always had the oldest buses because there were not too many hills and they tended not to break down. It is a query about the fleet and obviously, about the upgrading to electrical vehicles.

Regarding ticketless travel, we spoke recently enough about the whole procedure of going cashless or in that direction. Many people are online. I believe Go-Ahead mentioned its very low level of cash collection. There is obviously a big cost in collecting cash, processing it and security and so on. Do the witnesses see this going in a particular direction as to cashless travel? This is not to exclude anyone but in terms of credit card acceptance and so on. I am aware that is an NTA project but I am interested in how it would improve the services and so on? I direct that question to Mr. Hann first regarding the fleet and the night buses.