Mr. John Murphy:

Yes, they should be barred. Part of what we see as the charter or engagement, if we get the advisory council established, would be to have powers available to use against repeat offenders. There are known repeat offenders across all networks. There should be some type of action that can be taken to ensure these offenders are removed from the infrastructure or not allowed on it.

Going back to the Deputy's last question, one of our survey responses from our original survey might give the committee a flavour. This is a response from a driver. He said he had to endure two passengers racially abuse a female with no response from security. As a human morally, he wondered where he stood. He said this should not be accepted or tolerated in any walk of life but because he is a driver and the procedure is to stay in your cab at all times or potentially be reprimanded there is a catch-22. He said it was horrible to be in that situation. That was a driver who responded about having to be in a position where he could see and hear the abuse taking place on the vehicle he was operating but his training was to stay in the cab at all times and just radio through. He said that did seem right to him as a human being, but what was he supposed to do? These are the things facing employees across all public transport. I am not sure whether the Deputy was here when Ms Armstrong gave an earlier piece about the deterrent of seeing a garda or, we hope in future, a policing unit. Their presence and the knowledge they can enforce, detain, arrest and remove people from transport will be the biggest deterrent to alleviate the vast majority of problems that exist at the moment.