Sir, – It is nonsense for Andrew McLindon, manager, Media PR of Bus Éireann (July 31st) to suggest that Expressway services are operated by Bus Éireann on a purely commercial basis and receive no State funding. Without the regular government bailouts and the school transport contract it gets annually from the Department of Education without a public tender process there would be no Bus Éireann and nobody in the media office of Bus Éireann to defend Expressway Services.
School transport is 50 per cent dearer per student here than in Northern Ireland. In the Bus Éireann Statement of Account for 2011 published on the Department of Education website the major cutbacks in services – which amounted to 10.3 per cent fewer children carried – resulted only in a saving to the department of 1 per cent and yet the cost per child carried increased by 9.1 per cent.
Bus Éireann has never published its separate profit and loss accounts for its operation of the school transport contract or the Expressway inter-city services. It has admitted to the Public Accounts Committee that it suffered losses in Expressway services from 2008 to 2010.
I say turn off the life support machine keeping Bus Éireann afloat and allow public transport in Ireland to flourish. Voltaire said that if you want to keep your garden tidy you do not keep a plot for weeds.
Don’t force the bus operators industry to the courts to fight the State on unlawful state aid. We need leadership to do the right thing. – Yours, etc,