Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

I agree that needs to be taken into consideration. CIE and the CIE companies are State-owned companies. We always take in mind that we want State-owned companies to be successful. It is also important to bear in mind that some of the new intercity private bus services are very popular. Passengers like the quality of service to be very good and find them relatively inexpensive. Of course jobs are created by those services, which means the net number or people employed may be much the same.

On the Deputy's other question, while I do not know that particular section of the Act, the PSO licences for Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann expire at the end of 2014. In line with the action plan for jobs and the programme for Government, the NTA, in conjunction with the Government, is exploring options for offering out those contracts or parts of those contracts to tender, but no decisions have been made in that regard.

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