Brendan Ryan (Labour)

The motivation behind the amendment is to ensure we have a level playing field. The Minister indicated this is already the case. Perhaps the amendment is a statement of the obvious and is not, therefore, necessary. It is motivated by a fear that in the push to open the market to competition, the authority may favour private operators to demonstrate an accelerating pace of deregulation in the transport sector. For this reason, it would not do any harm to make a statement that is clearly desirable.