Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

It is the case that Pobail administers the rural transport scheme for the Department of Transport. Even though Pobail comes under my Department administratively, the day time rural transport scheme of the Department of Transport is totally a matter between Pobail and the Department of Transport and I have no day-to-day function in it.

However, with my wider rural hat on me, I am very interested in that scheme. My understanding is it is to be rolled out nationwide and I have not heard anything of cutbacks. In fact, if Deputy Wall checks the Estimates, although I am open to correction on this, he will find the provision is increased this year.

This is a key point. There is a totally different ethos involved in the night time scheme than in the day time scheme. The day time scheme mainly focuses on that section of the community that would be entitled to free travel where there are no buses on which to travel. It caters for persons such as pensioners, older persons and persons with a disability.

When I set up the night time scheme I was afraid — there is a certain validity to my fear — that, because of the tradition during the day time scheme for people who did not have cars to use it, there would be a greater focus in the night time scheme on people entitled to free travel. However, the night time scheme was to focus on the entire community who wanted to go out at night and did not want to have to drive home. Such persons might have a car or two in the driveway. If a couple wanted to go out for a night, the idea was that they would feel safe going home.

I will review this scheme. One of the reasons I am extending it to the end of the year is that I want to carry out a proper review. I note from the figures that between 64% and 66% of the night time passengers are free travel holders, but the total population of rural Ireland includes many more people who do not qualify for free travel. Therefore, to a point, one could state that we are not picking up paying customers. I am not against free travel holders using the service, but we are not inveigling paying customers onto buses. There are two downsides in that regard. First, we are not serving a market that everyone stated was there — the people who want to go out to socialise for a night who have a car but do not want to take it — and, second, I could provide a much better service for much less money if I had a bigger proportion of paying customers on the buses.

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