Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The Minister cites Dublin as an example. Dublin certainly is an example that people in Cork need to look at very carefully. What percentage of the routes have been privatised in Dublin? Go-Ahead Ireland has control of 10% of the routes, I think. Fines were announced the other day for falling down on service provision. Dublin Bus was fined €1.5 million and Go-Ahead Ireland was fined €850,000. I would expect that if Go-Ahead Ireland had 10% of the routes it would get 10% of the fines, if its service provision was of an equal quality to the public company. They did not have 10% of the fines; they had nearly 40% of the fines. Going by fines, the service was nearly four times worse on the private routes. That is a warning to the people of Cork. They need to raise their voices to stop the threat of privatisation of bus services in the city. The Minister has not excluded that as a possibility. He has said that there are various options but by citing the European directives he has given a very clear indication of what road the NTA is likely to go down. Can he clarify when the NTA will provide clarification on this question?

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