Ms Anne Graham:

I will speak firstly about the reliability of services. That is a concern of ours as well. In order to attract people, all people, on to transport we must ensure that our services are reliable. There are occasions when services do not turn up for mechanical or other reasons, and that is regrettable. However, we want to ensure that the customer knows about such services and that is why real-time passenger information is such an important tool as an information source for passengers.

Through our contracting team and contracts, we have been driving both the reliability and punctuality of our transport services. This is through the performance indicators that are in our contracts. We have seen significant improvements in the reliability and punctuality of the services provided by Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann and Go-Ahead Ireland. We hope customers in Kilbeggan will see an improvement as well but, unfortunately, there are times when a service does not operate, and we obviously apologise for that. I hope the information provided is trustworthy. We work with the operators to ensure real-time information is reliable because there is nothing worse than standing at a stop while not having the correct information. We continue to work on that. It is always a work in progress to ensure we make improvements.

We hear the frustration of the committee in terms of moving quicker on delivery. It is the delivery of infrastructure that was built without accessibility in mind. We are retrofitting, we know that. The scale of retrofitting is significant in some cases and will take a period of time. It requires funding and the resources of local authorities to deliver that. It is our ambition to move as quickly as possible to deliver that, but delivery and requests must be reasonable. That is the responsibility of the NTA in working with local authorities and operators. I hope it gives the committee some comfort that we also want to improve and improve services. It is not a lack of ambition or drive on our part either.