Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Ms Graham and Mr. Creegan have identified the issue of funding. It is interesting to come back to that. I remind them of the name Jarrett Walker and the BusConnects project. I have never seen someone who has published a report become so passionate in advocating publicly for their report, as Mr. Walker was, in fairness to him. I am thinking of something like BusConnects that would be a big, visionary idea. In fairness to the NTA, it has been incredibly responsive to the feedback over time to the initial design. The authority has been quite good and responsive in changing routes and so on. It is not a criticism of that, but if I was to step back and look at the communication and delivery of that visionary plan for BusConnects, I wonder if a directly elected mayor taking up that project could have got better public buy-in for it. I say that as a Deputy who campaigned strongly against some of the measures the NTA was proposing. Deputies, councillors and local authorities will always think of their parochial interest, whereas there was a larger benefit to BusConnects. Other than the NTA, there were often few others championing the programme to the public. Do the witnesses see the merit in having that type of democratic support for solutions that might assist them?