Mr. Martin Nolan:

This leads back to Deputy Fleming's points also. We brought in an international study group and it found we were as efficient as any of our peers. Since then, our subvention has gone down by 30%. The private operators are more commercial and more business-oriented. The inter-city business shows that up. We still go into the towns and villages at no additional cost to the State and we try to do that as much as we can. Some of the rot is caused by our acting in the national interest. The private operators are serving the larger population centres so we need to do that as well, and that will cause us to bypass locations. We need that commercial freedom because we cannot run a loss-making service against other providers that do not get funds from the State.

Private bus operators have various groupings. I am aware they are in discussions but I do not know where they are in that regard. We co-operate with them because they are the biggest provider of services to us. We pay €114 million to private bus operators each year to provide services, mainly for the school transport scheme.