Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Clearly, Mr. Strachan has an extremely broad range of experience, which is very welcome, both in the UK and Australia, and through his involvement with various boards. What knowledge does he have of the Irish system? I ask because every system and country differs. Perhaps he has loads of knowledge about our system or perhaps none. I would not discount him if he does not have any experience but perhaps there is stuff that he did not mention in his opening statement which shows he has an understanding of the Irish system. Is Mr. Strachan sure that he has time for the authority? I ask because he does an awful lot of other things.

On the NTA, I am around long enough to remember being a councillor. I was chair of the Dublin regional authority when the Dublin Transport Authority, DTA, was being set up and I think there was an interim chair of a body that did not exist yet in legislation. That was way back in time and the authority has come a long way. I ask Mr. Strachan, as chair, to outline his priorities, ambitions and challenges whether that is congestion, lack of funding of whatever. I am very interested in hearing his timeline regarding the use of credit cards and when people will be able to use them on various modes of transport. I have a Leap card but not everyone does and people getting off planes certainly do not usually have them if they are tourists.

I want to acknowledge the progress made. The introduction of the €2 fare has been a game-changer in terms of encouraging people to use and connect services. Last week, the chief executive of the NTA was before the committee and we appreciate her attendance plus those of her colleagues. We, as a committee, are interested in the issue of bus driver shortages. I am particularly interested in the provision of night buses in the Dublin region but also in other areas that warrant such a service. We have an issue with Dublin Airport and the cap. A lot of that is caused by the land-based access to Dublin Airport. What is being done to get ever more operators whether it is Aircoach, Dublin Express, Dublin Bus or other operators to deliver more people and make more services available so people do not have to feel that they need to drive their cars to the airport thus causing congestion and, equally, incurring quite large parking charges?

I did not know that Mr. Strachan was involved with clamping regulation. I did not know that about the NTA and I am not sure that anyone else did either so I thank him for that.

Mr. Strachan mentioned that the authority now receives approximately €1.6 billion, almost €1 billion of which is allocated to capital investment and it collects about €450 million in fare revenue so I presume that €600 million is allocated to subsidise buses. Is it fair to say that the fare box is less then 50% of the cost of running the service? In other words, are PSO transport services, wherever they exist, subsidised to tune of in excess of 50%? I have outlined my initial points and thank Mr. Strachan for being here.