Mr. Stephen Kent:

The vast bulk of the vacancies are in Cork at the moment. We are hardest hit there. Approximately 37 of the 66 driver vacancies are based there. After that, there is a smaller number of vacancies in each depot. Dublin is probably getting closer to where we would have been on drivers. In the case of mechanics, it is most challenging in the Dublin region. When I appeared before the committee in August last year, we had a lot of difficulties, particularly in servicing Deputy O'Rourke's area. Since then, we came back and adjusted the pay. We conducted a review of the market to see if we could sharpen the tools. We have gone back in through the apprenticeship programme and I have made representations to try to continue to increase that. We are doing everything we possibly can and there are things coming through. As of this morning, we have 12 vacancies but there are three mechanics in the pipeline for Cork. That is going to help us to solve some of the issues we have had most recently in Cork. The last number of weeks have been a very challenging period. There is probably a longer pipeline in relation to Dublin as it stands, to be honest. That will be the challenge for us. Apprentices are coming through. Ms O'Sullivan will elaborate further on what we are doing.

In terms of what we would ask of the committee or the Government, the 66 vacancies I am talking about relate to meeting our existing service obligations and covering seasonal demand as we go into the summer. People need their holidays and we try to cover that. That figure does not take account of the growth that is needed going forward. That is what I am signalling today. It is a big number over the next three years, between people who retire or who move. We are competing against the likes of Tesco, logistics companies and so on. We are in a full employment economy and we can see that people are moving on. The NTA wants to see a 70% increase in services in Limerick and a 50% increase in Cork. That is all coming down the line, not to mention the extra 100,000 students on the school transport scheme. There are thousands of good quality jobs sitting on one side of the funnel. We are doing what we can to ramp up our ability to recruit and train drivers and bring them on. However, we have to be careful. We can take people with a B-class licence and train them in three to four weeks but new drivers need time to become experienced. There is no point in putting them out there and then causing collisions. That is not to say that they do but we have to give drivers a chance to gain experience. We probably need six to eight weeks to be able to get good quality driving delivered in the way we want, to the standards we expect in the industry. That takes time to do.

Another big issue is the cost of people coming on in the short term. There are lots of things that we are trying to do. We have lots of open days and we go abroad. We are trying to get drivers in and get them trained but we need buses and other facilities to do that. We need all of these things put in place to do it. We will do everything we possibly can but a more structured approach is required. Some of the other national agencies should be involved, particularly with regard to advertising and training. A training scheme should be condensed into three or four weeks so that people can leave whatever careers they are currently in and know that they could possibly be ready to go in a short timeframe. We might take on some of the training after that, once we take people in. Even if we take in D-class drivers at the moment, we would still train them so that they can become familiar with the routes and so on. We still have to do that. I would involve the bigger agencies and have a more co-ordinated structure in place for advertising and training. Given the scale of demand that is coming at us, that would be enormously helpful. If that could be subvented to some extent, it would be paid back in terms of the tax take once we put those drivers into quality jobs. That is what I would ask of the committee and the Government.