Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

The Deputy posed a number of questions and I will answer as many as possible. The programme for Government commits us to favouring public transport over road transport in the future. That is what we will do. We will be different from the previous Government in this regard. The latter, perhaps legitimately so, favoured road transport over public transport because it decided to give priority to building the inter-urban motorways. In fairness, the inter-urban motorway system is complete and we are of the view that the priorities are now different and that public transport should be favoured over road transport. However, what we intend to do in this regard will occur in the context of a shrinking budget. We are in the midst of an economic and financial crisis and we have a budget deficit of €18 billion.

Budgets are going to shrink. Everyone knows that or at least I hope they do. Essentially, the roads budget and the public transport PSO budget will both shrink. However, the former will shrink at a faster rate than the latter. Unfortunately, that is the context within which we are operating. I accept that shrinking budgets will impact on services. I am sure that the previous Government was aware of this when it developed its plan to reduce the PSO by €100 million over three years. We can, however, mitigate against the effects of this by introducing cost savings. In fairness, the CIE companies have been very effective to date in delivering such savings without their having too adverse an impact on services. However, every year it is going to be a struggle to deliver the reduction in the PSO budget while maintaining services. As my Cabinet colleagues have stated on many previous occasions, it is about doing more for less.

I have engaged in initial consultations with the CIE companies in respect of how they will proceed in this regard. They are commercial entities and, therefore, it is they - rather than me or the Minister of State, Deputy Kelly - who are best placed to deliver the required savings. My engagement with the companies in question is ongoing.

We do not have any plans to privatise bus or train services. We are, of course, considering the contents of the McCarthy report, which proposes privatising some of the subsidiaries but not train lines or bus routes. It might be difficult to find buyers for these subsidiaries because they do not generate profits. We favour more diversity in the provision of services and that is already available in the context of the licensing of private bus services.

See this speech in context