Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Ian and Chris, welcome to the Infrastructure Committee. You are very welcome. You have 10 minutes to make a presentation, and you can expect some questions from the Committee members. We are in your hands.

Mr Chris Conway (Translink): Thank you, Chair and Committee members. We sent a short paper in advance of the meeting, and I will cover the highlights and then pass back to the Chair for questions.

As we said in the paper, public transport enables many social, economic and environmental benefits for the whole of society. Recent research by the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) showed that, alongside the social and environmental benefits, there are about £4·55 of economic benefits derived from every pound spent on local bus services, and that analysis was done in England; indeed, public transport brings many benefits even to those who are not users. If the 81 million passengers used private cars instead of public transport, it would cause issues on our transport network. We can see the evidence from the recent capital investments in new stations, for example, the north-west transport hub, York Street station and more recently, Belfast Grand Central station. We have increased the capital investment in our rail infrastructure, such as contactless ticketing, zero-emission buses and the Gliders. Those have brought about significant benefits across society. There has been an increase in public transport journeys: we recorded an additional 3·5 million passenger journeys last year.

I come to the 2025-26 resource budget. That has always been a challenging area for Translink. The process adopted by all of the Infrastructure Ministers over the past decade from all of the parties has been the same, in that the public transport funding allocation is normally below what is required by the public service obligation (PSO) at the beginning of the year, and then the Department relies on monitoring rounds during the year to meet the public service obligation funding in whole. The Committee will be well aware of that, and of my attending Committee meetings and making the same point practically every year for the past 10 years. In 2024-25, however, there was limited monitoring round funding, which meant that the PSO funding requirement for bus and rail services could not be met. It is worth remembering that the PSO funding is for the socially necessary services where the fares do not cover the complete cost of the service. Therefore, although Translink continued to deliver those services, it made an operating loss of around £16 million last year.

The same process has been adopted for resource funding for 2025-26. It has reduced in real terms in 2025-26 compared with the previous year. Therefore, on the basis of Translink continuing to deliver the current bus and rail services, we will make a further significant loss this year. Our cash reserves will reduce to what I consider to be a financially unsustainable level. Translink is a public corporation. It has a duty to maintain reserves at a sustainable level and to be in a position to manage business risks. Obviously, it is a critical issue if we cannot maintain those cash reserves at a sustainable level. We continue to work with the Department for Infrastructure. However, given that we are already six months into the year, options are limited in terms of what we can do. Translink is doing all that it can to manage costs and maximise revenues across the network. That is, obviously, a critical issue for our public transport network. I am aware of the competing demands on public money. However, it is important that a decision is taken at Executive level on what funding is available for public transport and, therefore, what level of service it can afford to operate and maintain. I reiterate the significant benefits across society, health, education, the economy and the environment that public transport gives to Northern Ireland.

That is all that I want to say by way of a short introduction, Chair. I hand back to the Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is great. Thank you very much, Chris, for that. Before I make any comments as Chair, I say in my capacity as an MLA that I have found Translink really good to deal with and responsive to all of the local issues that we, as MLAs, all probably have. I have been impressed by the engagement between my office and me and Translink.

I have a few questions about some of your evidence, after which I will hand over to the Deputy Chair. You state in your briefing paper:

and you then note how challenging it is. Clearly, Translink has a key role in helping Northern Ireland to meet its climate change targets. There is significant pressure on trying to get people out of cars and into buses. For me, it is about getting a train from Bangor to Belfast. There is a government drive towards trying to achieve the Climate Change Act's targets, but it seems from your evidence that the investment is not going into one of the key arms that will help to deliver that. Is that a fair comment?

Mr Conway: Public transport plays a vital role in modal shift and decarbonisation. To achieve the targets in the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 and get to net zero is a big investment area. After agriculture, transport is one of the biggest emitters of carbon. Therefore, it is one of the biggest challenge areas to meet net zero.

Yes, we have been able to increase capital investment over the past number of years, but the resource to manage the services and get best use of that capital has not been there; in fact, we had plans to enhance some bus and rail services this year and had to hold back on those because we do not have the funding. Our current funding does not deliver the full service. That is why I say that, even to deliver the current service, we need to decide what funding can be achieved and what network that equates to. That would be a challenge with regard to the Climate Change Act.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Just picking up on your answer, it sounds as if, with regard to the role that Translink can play in delivering net zero and some of the climate change targets, there is reasonable capital infrastructure on Translink's part already. Is it fair to say that, in order to play your part, which is a significant part in providing the infrastructure to allow people to do that, the challenge is around resource?

Mr Conway: Yes. Our capital plan had benefits over the past 10 years, in particular with Belfast Grand Central station. That was addressing decades of underinvestment, so we cannot stop there. We need to continue on that trajectory with capital investment because, if we want more people to use public transport, the capacity has to be there. However, resource is a real constraint area on a year-to-year basis. It does not enable us to grow services in the way that we need to grow them in order to manage that modal shift.

We saw growth of about 6% last year and are starting to see 6% to 7% growth this year again, which is really good growth. Other regions in the UK are not seeing that level of growth. However, capacity is starting to become a challenge for us, and we do not have the investment to put that capacity in place. For example, it takes nine months to recruit and train a train driver. Those are nine months of cost before you have them out delivering anything. That is where the funding is needed to get that investment in place. Even for buses, it is still two to three months to get a driver in place. It then takes time for that service to get up and running to start pulling in revenue. There are always up-front costs to get those services up and running, and at the minute it is a real challenge for us to do that.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I will stick with the funding challenges that Translink is facing. Your briefing paper states:

I think that your pre-tax loss for 2025 was £5·6 million or something around there: is that right?

Mr Conway: Our operating loss is around £16 million. That is taking account of pension adjustments and other things, which is what you are quoting, but our operating loss last year was about £16 million.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): What happens in 2026-27? How are you funding that loss? It is clear that there is a trajectory. If the Minister does not find resource and that pattern continues for another couple of years, what happens?

Mr Conway: It cannot continue even this year. The loss that we forecast for this year is £25 million to £30 million. That would take our cash reserves down to below £10 million, and that is about one week's worth of our costs. To have such a low level of cash is not sustainable.

Over the weekend that we have just had, with storm Amy, we had teams out dealing with damage across the network. We had more than 30 trees down on the network, so we had chainsaw crews and all sorts of staff out to get services back up and running. That represents a lot of unbudgeted cost and loss of revenue over that time. If you do not have the cash reserves, you cannot deal with those situations. Given the situation that we will be in by the end of this year, we will have to ask the Department for a realistic public service obligation for the current network. That is all laid out in the public service agreement that we have with the Department. Alternatively, we may have to ask the Department to tell us what network it can afford and define it for us so that we can run it.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I will finish with this, and then I will hand over to the Deputy Chair. We will want to pick all of that up with the Department. The choices that you are outlining today, Chris, are that we run out of money or the Department uplifts the public service obligation, or that it outlines which services it wants to see reduced because there is not the money to do everything. It is not sustainable to go on providing the level of public transport that you currently have in future. I am not an accountant, but even I can see the trajectory, which is that the money will not be there. Is that fair enough?

Mr Conway: Those are the options exactly. Translink is a public corporation, with a board of directors. We have duties under the Companies Act 2006 and we would have to take steps to avoid Translink running out of cash. That is certainly not where we want to be, but there is a duty there. That is why we urgently need a discussion about what constitutes an affordable network and how we make the changes in order to get to that point.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I want to squeeze one more quick question in at the end. Are the Department and the Minister aware of the challenges that Translink face? Has the Department had sight, more or less, of the evidence that you have just given to me? Does it know how serious the situation is?

Mr Conway: Yes, it does, absolutely. The budget was confirmed only in the past few weeks and we have met the Minister and the Department since then to outline the seriousness of the situation. That should not be a surprise to anyone.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Thank you very much, Chris. That was really useful.

Mr Stewart: Chris and Ian, it is good to see you again. This is like an episode of Groundhog Day, where the situation is the same every time we watch it. The picture that you have painted for us is as bad as we have seen. I want to echo the Chair's comments and thank your staff, Graham and all the team for their work, particularly over the weekend, given the difficulties that Translink faced in response to the storm. You have always been forthcoming with the answers to the many constituency enquiries that we get.

Compared with the rest of the UK and Ireland, where do we stand in relation to capital funding per head of population?

Mr Conway: It is important to say that every public transport network in the UK and, in fact, globally, is subsidised to some level. That is the nature of public transport. You are providing socially necessary services and a subsidy is required to do that. That is quite common. Our subsidy per passenger, based on our public service obligation funding for this year, is about £1·20 across bus and rail. It is a bit higher in rail and a bit lower in bus, so that is an average. That is about 30% lower than the rest of the UK. If you look at Transport for Wales or Transport Scotland or the Republic of Ireland and compare an equivalent network, our subsidy is about 30% less than what is available elsewhere in the UK. That is a very low level of subsidy per passenger. To go back to the Chair's comment, if we want to address the Climate Change Act and everything else, we need to be thinking about the level of subsidy that is appropriate in order to achieve that. At that low level, it is very difficult for us to continue to grow services.

There are a lot of really good programmes out there, such as the all-island strategic rail review and other assessments of what we could do to grow our services. All of that will require resource funding, however, not just capital funding. After the capital, you need the resource in order to deliver the service. If we do not have enough funding to deliver the existing service, it begs the question: what would we do if we had a bigger level of service?

Mr Stewart: I think that we all agree that you are undoubtedly key players in climate change and the road to net zero. I will come on to a question regarding the all-island rail review afterwards. Will you talk us through the efficiency savings that Translink has made to date to try to make up some of the shortfall in funding? I appreciate that you talked about ticketless measures etc. Will you talk us through what has been done to date and how much that might equate to?

Mr Conway: In simple terms, there were enhancements that we had planned for this year that we have curtailed. That was the first thing that we did to manage our costs.

Ninety per cent of our cost is in people. A lot of it is about what we do around people. For the past year, we have had what I would term as a headcount freeze. We are still recruiting front-line staff if people leave and trying to maintain our headcount at where we finished last year.

That gives us some challenges because, sometimes, that creates a delay. Sometimes, we will have issues around a shortage of drivers, for example. If someone takes early retirement or goes on long-term sick, it is only then that we can engage and recruit. We cannot recruit ahead of that because we do not have the investment to do that. Sometimes, that creates gaps in our service. Those are the two big issues.

Another big cost for us is fuel. As you know, we hedge our fuel cost, and we have had major savings by continuing to do that. Those are the three big cost areas that we have continued to work on, and those give us challenges.

Mr Stewart: With regard to underinvestment in capital, I know from constituency inquiries, which I have fed through to Graham, and you will also be aware of them, that the reliability of some bus and train services, more regular breakdowns and ageing fleet is clearly to me and to colleagues who bring it to me becoming more of an issue. I assume that we are unable to buy as many new buses as we would like to because the money is not there. Is that noticeable to Translink? How impactful is that on the confidence of the users of the services and on you to keep buses on the road?

Mr Conway: We always work hard to make sure that we deliver the service —

Mr Stewart: I appreciate that.

Mr Conway: — that we are committed to deliver until that changes. Our maintenance and safety record for keeping fleet on the road is good. Obviously, ageing fleet creates an issue over time. We are working with the Department to bring economic appraisals forward to increase the capacity of our bus and rail fleet.

It is not an area that we would look to for efficiency because we look to deliver that service. It can create some challenges when we cannot get ahead of the curve in investment in some areas.

We have had to cut back on apprentices and graduate intake. Again, that is an area that was a challenge for us, albeit that we have a significant graduate and apprentice population. We felt that we had to pause that for one year under the efficiency measures that we currently have in place.

Mr Stewart: I have two more points, if I may. There are some fantastic aspects to the all-island strategic rail review, and we all recognise the potential of it. However, given the bleak financial picture that you have painted today that we hear year on year around funding, it feels like pie in the sky unless a creative way of funding that, integrated with Translink long term starts to be established, otherwise it is just a piece of paper with some grand ambitions.

Are there ongoing discussions between you and the Department about the key role that Translink has in that and how funding will be made available over time to start realising the potential of those plans?

Mr Conway: We are very pleased that the all-island strategic rail review was completed. We inputted into that, along with Irish Rail and others. It sets out a road map for the next 30 years that future generations can benefit from. We are very committed to working with all stakeholders to try to deliver the aspects of that and the funding that is required.

When the all-island strategic rail review was being done, we took the opportunity to do a programme called union connectivity to get the feasibility work under way. That was effectively funded by Westminster through the Department for Transport (DfT). That has got us to the point where we have the feasibility studies done, and we hope to publish that information in the autumn, or in the winter now, probably.

The key for those big, strategic projects is to continue momentum. The next stage will be to bring them to a strategic outline case. We will be working with the Department for Transport, the Department of Transport in the South and, perhaps, through the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) and others to try to look for a funding mechanism to bring those forward. It is our aim, at this point, to keep those projects moving through the various stages. Even though you do not know how you will get to the final point, you keep the momentum going in the projects in the short term. Yes, you are right. As we have started to deliver those projects, there will be resource requirements for them. Given the current situation, that will have to be in our mind. If we cannot address it now, we have got to think about the future and what it will mean for the future.

Mr Stewart: This is my final point, Chair. One of the things that we get lobbied on most is additional access to evening travel, be that on bus or train. We welcome the Nightmovers pilot that is happening. Will you give an update on that? From a purely parochial, selfish point of view, will it be extending to Carrickfergus and Larne —

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Seamless, John.

Mr Stewart: — this time or any time? Obviously, it is a popular route, and my constituents would love that, particularly around Christmas.

Mr Conway: We have been running a Christmastime night-time service for years; in fact, before COVID, we started to talk about the view that we needed to try to do it all year round. After COVID, we worked with other stakeholders. We are pleased that the business community, business improvement district (BID) teams and night-time czar in Belfast came out to support it and run campaigns to get the pilot up and running. We are certainly committed to it, and pleased to be so. It has not been fully approved yet. We have always said that it would take us a couple of months to get it in place — we have already talked about getting drivers and resources in place to do it. That will take a little bit of time, but, yes, we are committed to it. Depending on when the pilot can start, we still anticipate running a Christmas-type service in the run-up to Christmas this year. We are working with all of the stakeholders to see if we can get that approved and finalised. I do not know if Ian wants to comment on whether it will run to Carrickfergus.

Mr Stewart: It is low-hanging fruit, Ian. We are ready and waiting.

Mr Ian Campbell (Translink): There will be a late-night train service to Carrick.

Mr Stewart: Brilliant; I will note that.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Which you have just delivered, John. That will be on Instagram before you leave this meeting.

Mr Stewart: Thank you, guys. I will continue to engage with your team. I appreciate your time.

Mr Dunne: Thank you, gentlemen. I echo the comments about the good service that is provided at constituency level. You touched on the fleet and where we are with the resource challenges, and so on. Where are the rail and bus fleets with regard to how modern the vehicles are, electrification and carbon emissions, and so on? What are the percentages?

Mr Conway: Obviously, we do not have any electrification on our rail network, but, as part of the Union connectivity project, we got funding to do a feasibility study on electrifying the railway. We will publish the outcome of that. Again, we would like to take that forward; that is a significant project for us. The first part of it would probably be to electrify Belfast to Dublin, and then roll it out across the network. Technology is changing. We have also looked at hybrid technology, where you would have some battery as well as some overhead electrification. That is at the feasibility stage.

We are also looking at "new train 4", as we call it. It will be in the next cadre of fleet that comes into the rail network. That is at economic appraisal stage. Most of those projects will take a few years to deliver. We have to work on the existing capacity and maximise that through frequency, because we can still grow capacity on the existing network by using our existing fleet but increasing frequency. That is what we want to do, but, obviously, there is a cost to putting resources in place.

We have about 240 zero-emission buses in our bus network. Derry/Londonderry is 100% zero-emission, and Belfast is about 40% zero-emission. We would like to grow that in Belfast. Urban areas have more challenges with regard to carbon emissions and air pollution, so it is, obviously, a priority to get to zero-emission in urban areas. We have an economic appraisal with the Department for a further 200 zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs).

That would get us to about a third of our fleet being zero-emission buses; we have a fleet of about 1,300 buses. If you compare that with what is happening across the UK, you see that it is quite an ambitious target but also quite successful. We are very committed to continuing to roll out the zero-emission fleet across our network. Obviously, it is a bit more challenging in rural areas because of the type of electrification used. We have some hydrogen buses in our fleet, which we continue to pilot and trial to see how we can make the best use of hydrogen on longer distances.

Mr Dunne: Has the budget situation made electrification of the network more challenging?

Mr Conway: Yes. Our capital budget has reduced over the past two years, and, if that continued, it would make it a challenging situation to get to zero emissions on our bus and rail network.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that.

There has been a lot of disruption caused by Grand Central station over the past number of years, including for the local traders. I am keen to get an update on the remaining aspects of the work to complete the project.

Mr Conway: We are working very closely with stakeholders, and we have done a lot of good work in engaging with the community. For example, we have the "Right up your street" initiative, where local traders can come into Grand Central station to market their business. There is the new "meanwhile use" site there as well, which helps to bring footfall into the area to help traders. We are working to an end-of-November date to reopen Durham Street and to allow set-down and pick-up on Durham Street to Grand Central station, which will help a number of constituents. Coming up to Christmas, there is always congestion in Belfast. Durham Street is not the only issue that needs to be dealt with, and the Minister has announced some initiatives to ease the congestion and to encourage people to use public or other modes of transport rather than private cars. That is what we all want to try to do to make the city successful for everyone. We are working very hard towards the end-of-November date.

Mr Dunne: OK. That is good news.

Finally, we have talked about the George Best Belfast City Airport rail link with you at previous meetings. The master plan was recently launched, and it mentioned that the airport will work with Translink on the rail link using a public-private partnership. Is there any update on the prospects of the rail link happening?

Mr Conway: It is early days. We have worked closely with the airport over the past couple of years on that.

Mr Dunne: I know that you have.

Mr Conway: Again, we have done a feasibility study, and it was presented in the master plan. The next stage is to bring the feasibility study to a strategic outline case and a business case to get approval. The airport is keen that we work together to do that. It has committed a small amount of funding to get the feasibility study completed in this financial year. We will look at how to fund the next stage to get it to an outline business case and to get it delivered. Certainly, it is a very feasible project, and we are very keen to work with the airport and to have a public-private partnership. When we look at funding and at financing schemes, public-private partnerships are not talked about very much these days. While some examples have not been great in the past, there are some very good ones. We need to look for different models to finance projects, and the airport working with us is a good start.

Mr Dunne: That is positive. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.

Mr McMurray: I thank you for the service and give a big shout out to the 215. I got that bus this morning, and it is always good. [Laughter.]

It is good to see you out of a sling, Mr Conway.

Mr Conway: Thank you.

Mr McMurray: I always come here and think that I will ask questions. Then, when I hear you speak, the questions go by the by.

You mentioned that the storm damage is not budgeted for. Has there been a noticeable trend? Obviously, anecdotally, we see more extreme weather events, but is there empirical evidence about the trend for increasing unbudgeted spends because of it? What has the past 10 years been like? Will you start to budget for the next 15 years?

Mr Conway: There certainly is a trend — we can all see it — towards named storms, which are much more severe in nature than we would typically see. If we take storm Amy as an example, while it was down as a yellow storm rating, actually, in some parts of the country, it was up as high as red; we had 90 mph winds. Although we do a lot to manage the railway network and to keep it safe, there are trees along that network that can cause problems, including trees that are not on the network but are close to it and that are owned by other people. When they come down on the network, it is majorly disruptive. That can cause damage to trains, as well as damage to the railway infrastructure, the signalling infrastructure and even things such as barrier arms and crossings. That all takes time to repair. Storm Éowyn caused significant damage as well; it cost over £1 million to fix some of the damage as a result of that storm. We are seeing that trend increasing.

We have a climate change strategy about what we want to do to get modal shift and move our fleet towards zero emission, but we are also developing a climate adaptability strategy, which looks at the fact that the climate is going to change, regardless, and how we will deal with that. We have miles of sea defences, bridges, tunnels and culverts, and all of that will have to be maintained. Those structures will have to be investigated to see what it will cost to make sure that they are able to manage changes in climate. I cannot give you total budget figures right now, Andrew, but we are working out what the budget for that will be over the next decade.

Mr McMurray: That would be interesting to see.

You mentioned modal shifts and patterns. Is that uniform across the province? Are there areas where it is easier to get people onto public transport? I am presuming that I know the answer to that. How do you go about trying to make that modal shift?

Mr Conway: Obviously, urban areas and interurban areas are where you get the biggest opportunity for modal shift. If someone is travelling from Enniskillen to Belfast or from Downpatrick to Belfast, that is a big opportunity to use a bus or a Goldline service. You can also avail yourself of park-and-ride on a lot of those routes. Urban areas are where the biggest opportunity is for people deciding not to use their car and to use the Glider, a Metro service or the railway. That is where you will get the biggest change. Rural areas are more challenging because of the frequency of the service that we can offer. For rural areas, it is more about how you use the park-and-ride network and how to get people to the closest park-and-ride. That involves interchange, and, sometimes, once people get in the car, they just want to finish the journey. It is about getting the idea of interchanging to a park-and-ride. There are a number of opportunities where both capacity and behavioural changes are something that we need to work on together, but we have seen good growth over the past couple of years. If we could continue that momentum with the right level of investment, I think that we could see the modal shifts that we want to achieve.

Mr McMurray: You mentioned a reliance on the monitoring rounds as a way of making up the funding. What would happen if your requirement was not met by the monitoring rounds? What are the practical workings out then?

Mr Conway: As I have said, if the Department, through the Executive, is not able to provide the funding through the monitoring rounds that is required to meet the public service obligation, it needs to decide what network it can afford, and those changes would need to be made fairly urgently, so that we can get to a financial model that is sustainable.

Mr McMurray: OK. I will leave it there.

Again, on the finance and the financial pressures, you mentioned reserves. What is the bottom line limit where Translink becomes — what is the word? —

Mr Conway: Unsustainable.

Mr McMurray: — unsustainable? When the rubber hits the road, what is the level? You mentioned £10 million. What is the actual level? What are the tick-off features or the red flags that need to be communicated to the Department in order to avoid that?

Mr Conway: We have an independent Treasury report that advises us on the minimum level of cash reserves that we should hold to ensure that the business is sustainable. That recommended level is about £30 million. That is about a month of outgoings for us, so that is roughly where we need to keep it. It keeps us just about where we need to be. We are currently projecting significantly less than that: less than £10 million by the end of this year. The trigger is now to decide to try to address that. We need to make some critical decisions over the next couple of months as to how we manage that going forward.

Mr McMurray: Thank you.

Mr Boylan: Welcome back again, Chris. I do not know how many years in a row it is now.

I will pick up on a few interesting points. We have had two major storms this year, as you know, and we need to look at it seriously. Storm Éowyn was tough, but you are right that there has been damage even with storm Amy, so you need to look at that and prepare for it going forward, and there is some contingency there.

I will pick up on a few specific points. A lot of questions have been asked. Can you expand on your engagement with the Minister?

Mr Conway: We have been engaging with the Department, including the Minister at times, on a more general basis, since the draft budget came out in the June time frame. That obviously went through an equality impact assessment and all of that, and we have been highlighting our concerns around the draft budget. We were hoping that some of that could be addressed when the budget was finalised, but that has not been achievable. When the budget was finalised, we met the Minister and the Department again to say how serious the issue was and to highlight the concerns. I am very aware of the other pressures on DFI's budget and the Executive's Budget, but I do not have the solutions to those. I can deal only with what I am responsible for and try to highlight the issues and concerns.

Mr Boylan: I appreciate that, and it is interesting. Listen, any engagement that I have had with Translink has been no bother. It is slightly different for me in more of a rural area. We try to encourage that modal shift, but it has been a bit more difficult than you have highlighted, so I will not get into that.

The other issue in the midst of all this and all the challenges is that we are just after building Grand Central station. It is a new, state-of-the-art hub. I know that it is early days for us, but what impact has that had on travel and all-island travel? How is that process working?

Mr Conway: It has had significant benefits. We have seen growth in our passenger numbers relating to Grand Central station of about 4 million passenger journeys a year. That brings in revenue and the net benefit of that capital investment in our resource funding creates a benefit. That is something to be conscious of always: those capital investments do actually create a net benefit.

We have also been able to run an hourly service between Belfast and Dublin, which we could not do from our existing station. Again, that was funded by the Shared Island Fund; we will go anywhere where there is funding. That route has seen a 40% growth in passengers, and that will only continue.

We have seen good growth on our interurban bus services and significant growth on our rail services and network, since Grand Central station was built. We have busy times now, whereas, after COVID, a lot of people were saying that the commuter market would never come back again because of hybrid working and everything else. However, we are seeing the commuter market back again significantly now. Since COVID, we have also seen a big growth in the leisure market. When people work in a hybrid way, they tend to want to get out at weekends and go out in the evenings, so we are seeing a big growth in the leisure market too. That all bodes well, but we need investment to maintain that.

Mr Boylan: My final question — I was going to pick up on the COVID stuff, but I appreciate that we are talking about budgets today. Can you outline, in a few words, the major challenge in terms of what you face now and what you are trying to overcome, besides getting up and needing the money to develop that? What are your main, major challenges to move to the next level and bring it back to where we were?

Mr Conway: Last year, we delivered 81·2 million passenger journeys, and we forecast that we will deliver about 85 million passenger journeys this year. That is above the number that we had pre COVID. We lost the COVID years and a few years following them, as we tried to grow back. We have now pretty much grown back to where we were pre COVID. We want to grow that to 100 million passenger journeys in the next few years. To do that, we need investment. There are areas in which we could increase our service to facilitate demand, because the passengers are there to do it, but we just need the investment.

There are a number of areas in our Belfast Metro network to look at, including Glider phase 2. To put it into context, Glider phase 1 carries seven million passengers a year. Glider phase 2 is a major initiative for helping travel in the Belfast area, but there are lots of interurban areas where there is not enough frequency. We would like to increase the frequency of our interurban bus services. Although we did an enhancement to the rail network when we put in Grand Central station, we would like to go a step further and put in additional frequency. Those are possibilities that exist in our current network, before even starting to look at growing the network, but it all takes investment.

Mr Boylan: There is no chat about a Glider around Armagh or Newry, just so you know, but I will cut that conversation. You are right that there are opportunities for partners through the Shared Island thing. We will need to look at developing that in the future. Thanks very much for your presentation.

Mr McNulty: Thanks, Chris; it is good to see you.

I will start by talking about the hourly Enterprise service. That is a phenomenally positive feat of transport and has been a game changer, given the barriers to that progressing. I campaigned on that for a long time, Chris, as you know. I would love to know how you overcame the pathways issues on the Dublin side in order to get that uplift in passenger rates. You mentioned a 40% uplift, but the annual report states that it is 50%. Which is it? I would like clarification on that. Either way, it is extraordinary; it is a game changer. It is a case of, "If you build it, they will come". That demonstrates how positive it has been. It has changed how people on the eastern economic corridor of the island live and how much more readily they use public transport. Well done. Everybody in Translink, the Department of Transport in the South, the Department of the Taoiseach and the Shared Island unit deserves a big pat on the back for getting there. It is phenomenal. Well done.

Mr Conway: OK. The growth figure sometimes depends on whether we are talking about the cross-border service or all of the service. As you know, people from Newry use the service as a local service, as well as it being a cross-border service. Sometimes that is the difference. When we talk about 40%, we are talking strictly about the cross-border service. There has been growth overall, however, because it provides a local service from Newry to Belfast, a local service from Portadown, and a local service in the South, into Dublin from Drogheda and Dundalk. There are sometimes slight differences in the numbers, therefore, depending on which figure you are talking about.

Mr McNulty: How were the pathways issues overcome on the Dublin side?

Mr Conway: Sorry, Justin? How will —?

Mr McNulty: How were the pathway issues with the DART in Dublin overcome?

Mr Conway: The National Transport Authority and Irish Rail have a wider plan to put in additional capacity at the approach to Connolly station in the north of Dublin. We have been working on our business case for the new Enterprise fleet. One of the options there is to have some additional passing loops in the South to improve the journey time between Newry and Dublin and to make sure that it interworks with the increase in capacity to the DART network. A number of short-term measures are being talked about for dealing with that. The longer-term solution is to put additional rail infrastructure into the north side of Dublin to manage that capacity.

Mr McNulty: The Armagh to Portadown rail link is another "Build it and they will come" rail transport network for which I have campaigned vociferously for a long time. The consultation has been completed and is with the Minister for review. I hope that that will progress to construction. On the reality of where our rail system was and where it is now, do you as a transport organisation lament the lack of vision from the past, in that our rail network was allowed to deteriorate to the level that it is at now, compared with where it was 70 years ago? Does that make you lie awake at night, staring at the stars and wishing, "If only"?

Mr Conway: Absolutely, Justin, but I must say that that was well before my time. In the current context, you look back and say, "That seems like a crazy decision that was taken back then", but, in those days, the car was revolutionary, and everyone felt that everyone was going to travel by car in the future. There was no thought given to the climate, the environment or anything like that. There was plenty of road capacity, so what was the issue? I suppose that that is what was going on in people's heads then. Roll forward 50 years, and, given the climate issues with emissions from private cars, finite road capacity, the growth of population and growth in car registrations, we know that something has to change. We now look at what we can do to address the situation with bus and rail. I cannot comment on what was happening and going on in people's heads in those times, Justin, but I lament it now.

Mr McNulty: The precarious financial situation in which you find yourself, and the choices that are laid before you, are frightening, but that has been addressed.

It states on page 13 of your annual report that:

In relation to the state-of-the art, shiny new transport hub — Grand Central station — are there any ongoing concerns around safety for staff or any issues around sickness levels or anything that the Committee should be made aware of?

Mr Conway: No, Justin. There is nothing that we need to highlight around that. There are no real differences in any of our stations across Northern Ireland in meeting all requirements. I am not aware of any issues that the Committee needs to be aware of.

Mr McNulty: Thanks, Chris.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That completes questions from members. We will give consideration to the written and oral evidence that you have given us. I am sure that there will be some action points from that. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you for coming along today. It has been an interesting session.

Mr Conway: Thank you, Chair and Committee members.