Mr. Bill McCamley:

The big problem with this is that we have never, as a State or as a parliamentary system, got down to discussing what a national transport plan should be. It has always been ad hoc. Reference has been made to ideological ailments in the context of the current proposals but we must remember that CIE was established for pragmatic reasons. Trade union colleagues and I prefer to look at this from a purely pragmatic point of view. Although I could present a social democratic view, I prefer a pragmatic one.
Deputy Kenny is correct that there could have been more if Fine Gael had been in a right-wing coalition, but we are where we are. What has not been addressed is that there is no business plan to justify what is being done. We cannot say that the taxpayer and the State will benefit from it and we cannot say how this will affect national strategic aims regarding the regions, inter-urban travel and rural isolation because there are unintended consequences to these proposals which have not been considered.
Until now, the commercial services of Bus Éireann subvented the public service obligation services because they were under-funded. The way licences were distributed in recent years affected the company's bottom line. It has been reduced to pulling out of villages and hamlets as a consequence, and this will occur again because nobody knows what will happen once elements and components of the network are removed. When we talk about public transport provision, we forget two factors. Anybody can make money on a bus service from A to B if he or she has the right corridor. The other factor is much more sophisticated and socially desirable, which is a network. Bus Éireann provides a national, integrated network. If one starts taking out bits and pieces, one does not know where that will end. That could have an effect because of the economies of scale being attacked. Services may have to be taken out which were never intended to be removed.
I am conscious the Deputy is from Dublin. Nobody is making allowance for the fact that the Dublin Bus may have its own particular problems relating to TUPE, pensions and the letter of comfort, which is there as a consequence of the Transport Act 1986. Leaving that aside, it would be unfair if the changes in the Dublin area were not financially neutral in regard to Dublin Bus. The company should have the right and should be given every opportunity to expand its services. It has retrenched because of the recession but it needs to be able to provide capacity for its customers going into the future. We are not sure about that.
What has been forgotten regarding Bus Éireann is that once one removes the economies of scale, administration and so on, the social dividend the company has provided in isolated villages and so on will also go and the State will have to pick that up. We have to be able to compete on a level playing ground for commercial services on Expressway routes with the private operators. When we do that, areas will be left out, which will then become subject to PSOs in their own right. Once again, the State will pick them up. These are hidden costs that are never discussed. There is no like-for-like judgment and the cost of tendering, administering and monitoring the tendering process is never quantified. Nothing is said about the areas that will be left behind or about the overall policy of integration, sustainability of services and so on. All that is forgotten in the rush to fulfil a simple ideological aim.