Mr. Garret Doocey:

Public transport services are regulated by the NTA and provided by operators. As the Deputy has said, in the case of Cork city, Bus Éireann is the operator. These services are provided under contract with the NTA. The contracts are published. There is a long list of schedules to those contracts, and they deal with things like performance expectations, key performance indicators, etc. There are also penalties imposed on operators if they do not meet the key performance thresholds that are set within the contract. In the case of Bus Éireann, it received significant penalties last year and possibly in 2023 in relation to performance issues. Other operators have also been penalised, including private operators who operate publicly subvented services. I have the details in the pack. I can come back to the Deputy on how much in financial penalties has been imposed in 2024. However, they are imposed on operators.