Mr. Hugh Creegan:

We will prepare a note on the plans we have in place to improve night-time services in rural areas.

The Deputy asked how we evaluated which towns were next. There is not a single formula there. We need to take account of things like whether the town has services running through it. There are lots of towns like that and those through services often provide an adequate service to deal with it most of the time. If a commercial service is already providing some services, we need to be careful. We cannot parachute in a subsidised service and put the existing service out of business. It is a judgment call and it is usually driven by what we believe is the real demand - the unmet demand - for the service in a particular area. We have a whole portfolio of towns across the country that we would like to do. It is a matter of having enough funding, enough drivers and enough vehicles to cover all that. It is not a bureaucratic formula. We try to take all the relevant factors into account and identify where the greatest needs are.