Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

I acknowledge what the Senator has said and I confirm that as a Minister I do not feel I must willy-nilly slavishly follow advice or recommendations I am given. It is important that we seek advice, consult as widely as possible in various areas and ask people for their considered views. At the end of that in view of all the circumstances the Minister should make up his or her mind as to the best way forward. Often the theory may appear good but does not take into account a range of matters, not least of which are human factors that could make life difficult one way or the other. I am not saying that is the case here.

Regarding accepting part of this advice and rejecting other parts, I have enormous time for the DTO, which is very skilled, specialised and focused on the task it is doing. It has given good advice in the past, much of which has been accepted. Much of the work it did on Platform for Change formed the basis for Transport 21. In establishing a transport authority in Dublin, it would be ridiculous — as I am sure the Senator accepts — to have it outside of that structure. As it is it will become part of it. It will be a specialist group in a larger organisation, which will be very helpful to the DTA.

The Senator has acknowledged some of the points I made about the Railway Procurement Agency and I will not reiterate them for too long. We are concerned here with a service provider. From my work in a number of different ministries I have experience of keeping regulatory bodies separate from those involved in the provision of services. In this case it is a halfway house. I decided not to included the RPA, which I will explain in a moment, but I am giving the DTA the power to step in and provide a service if it is necessary in cases where the RPA, Bus Éireann or any other organisation might not be delivering, which is extremely important. That is the main reason.

The subsidiary reason is that I have been conscious that we should consider opportunities to bring small bodies, organisations and agencies together to make them somewhat larger and reduce the number of bodies in total. In the case of the RPA or any other body it can be enormously disruptive. While I have often said we have an excellent public service, it is very difficult to change it. I would envisage that moving even a relatively new agency like the RPA into a new body would lose a few years in the provision of vital infrastructure like the metro. The uncertainty would give rise to the possibility of losing good people from the organisation because they did not like where they were going or for some other reason.

At this crucial time it is better to let it get on with that job. I hope it will deliver within schedules. There is nothing to stop a Minister at a later stage making a policy decision that it, or indeed Bus Átha Cliath, Iarnród Éireann or another body should be absorbed into it. Now is not the time to do that. For the practical reason that the Bill covers enough ground as it is, we should not cover a matter on which we have no settled policy. That should be a matter for some Minister in the future. That is why the possibility of absorption is not specifically included. It would create uncertainty that we can do without at a particular time.