Mr. Billy Hann:

That was at the forefront of our minds during all of our crisis management sessions when dealing with that particular issue, so much so that we did go for that initial cordon of 1 km. We were conscious that people needed to get out of the city. We are also conscious and were advised by An Garda Síochána that some of these people were coming into the city on our services. That added another complication with regard to the decisions we had to make.

In addition to that, we had three buses which were burned to the ground. We had drivers being pulled off buses. All of that was in the mix and we had no real feeling that this was being contained and if anything, it was spreading and was possibly spreading to the suburbs.

We also had concerns about the safety of our depots. We must remember that we have a number of depots in very close proximity to everything that was going on there so we were very concerned about those.

Returning to the opening statement, we were really left with no choice other than to withdraw the services but we did not initially fully withdraw them. We withdrew them to a particular point and then we were very much left with no other option but to then fully withdraw them. That was done in full consultation with An Garda Síochána, with the National Transport Authority and with other operators during crisis meetings which were being held by the NTA at that particular time.

As to whether we can learn lessons from it, we will absolutely look at that in great detail and if there are lessons to be learned, we will certainly learn them.