Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on grasping the nettle on this proposal to open up the bus market. It has been in the pot for a very long time and I am very pleased to see it come to the boil at last, albeit in a more limited way than I would like. For that reason I regret it is happening when the market is contracting. It would have been so much easier if this had happened ten years ago when the demand for transport was expanding. As a result of that the bundle of networks is limited in the initial stage. Are the new contracts envisaged as a pilot scheme to test the proposition that the competitive tendering process will give us a service that is cheaper, more efficient and better for the consumer and taxpayer? Some people have expressed concern about it in other areas but of the kind of model envisaged here, London is the nearest one. I am very familiar with the services there. Competitive tendering has been hugely successful and the demand for travel has almost doubled on the London buses.

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