Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree that we will have to wait and see, and what I hope we will see in 2016 or 2017 is other people around the country, in other cities, looking at how much better the bus service in Waterford has become. I hope to hear those working in policy areas describing how the number of people using the bus in Waterford has increased and asking why it cannot be done in Limerick or Galway too. That is what I want to see in a few years' time, but we will have to wait to see whether it works.

As I mentioned earlier, the decision on Waterford was made not by me but by the NTA.

It would not make sense to tender out every tenth route because routes go into depots. One cannot tender out one tenth of a depot. A group of routes needs to be taken together.

With regard to the Waterford services, the National Transport Authority, NTA, noted the simplicity of tendering a comprehensive city operation and that the size of the tender package would make it attractive to the market. It would also offer the future opportunity to the NTA to benchmark a regional city bus operation.

Tendering of Galway and Limerick services was also considered as they are sufficiently large to attract interest from potential market entrants. However, they are also sufficiently small that bus and depot transfer from Bus Éireann may not be essential to secure an economically advantageous tender price. Waterford is the smallest city operation and can be grouped with services in other cities, thereby creating a geographical spread of tendering opportunities.

Tendering Cork city services was also considered an option but these services comprise almost 20% of the Bus Éireann PSO, public service obligation, operations. The consequential management of a 20% downsizing in terms of staffing and overheads would be very challenging to achieve without triggering a need for an additional PSO subsidy. Consequently, tendering the entire Cork network is not recommended, although individual corridors were considered.