Mr. Stephen Kent:

First, thanks for the comments for Linda. Our drivers are the unsung heroes every day. We have thousands of them out there and they do a great job. It is always important to recognise them so I thank the Senator for doing that.

I could not agree more on the buses. The issue at the moment is that in the business we are in, which is trying to convince more young people to use public transport, I would love them to have better experiences on more comfortable and more modern buses. However, we are where we are. Some of what we are doing is to try to change that. In relation to Bus Éireann itself, there are two aspects to this. One is the fact that we operate about 5% of the scheme directly, with our own fleet and our own drivers, and the other 95% is contracted in. In the case of our own fleet that is directly involved, part of our policy is to operate all vehicles up to the age of 20 years. That is the maximum age and we cut it off at that level. There are challenges there because to a large extent we are operating on the PSO side of the house with a younger age than that. On the contractor side, they are running with an average age of about 12 years. That is the average age of their vehicles. Of course, everybody is always trying to make sure that all of the buses run because we want the service to be reliable. We do not get a huge number of breakdowns. Considering that we deploy 8,200 vehicles every morning, it is remarkable how few fail but that is because a huge amount of maintenance is done. Part of the way to avoid maintenance is to continue to renew the fleet. In the case of the Bus Éireann fleet we have an average age of over 17 at the moment and are in dialogue with the Department in relation to replacing some of the fleet. We have some new buses coming on towards the end of the year and are in the process of completing a business case for another bunch that need to arrive in 2027. Some of our fleet urgently needs to be replaced and there is a conversation going on with the Department of public expenditure on that. They are the two issues on that front.