Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): You are very welcome. I apologise for the delay. I do not know whether you have ever presented to this Committee when I have not had to apologise for a late start. We had a lot on our agenda. We have Dale Hanna, chief operations officer with the Education Authority (EA); Tomas Adell, chief transformation officer; and Robbie McGreevy, chief people officer. If anybody wants to add anything to that introduction, please feel free. You are all very welcome and thank you for your time. We probably do not need any major preamble, because your briefing paper was comprehensive. I am happy to hand over to you for any opening remarks that you want to make, and we will then move into questions and answers. Over to you.

Mr Dale Hanna (Education Authority): Thanks, Chair. We probably do not want to go into lots of detail on the paper, but given the EA's announcement today on the savings that need to be made, we want to quickly touch on that to give the Committee a sense of it.

As the statement emphasised, the EA did not want to be in this position. We find it difficult to be in the position of making that announcement. We know that the education sector is living with the consequences of years of increasingly unmanageable funding shortfalls, and the warning that the Department and others made publicly about this year's budget is, sadly, being borne out by events. Today's announcement followed some really difficult deliberations. We had a special board meeting on them in September, and we have engaged widely with the Department on the detail. We will obviously be engaging with stakeholders and making further communication and announcements on specific savings in the coming weeks. We know that the Committee will want more detail on that, and I know that EA officers will be more than content to come back and discuss the detail.

Given that we have been here before around SEN and placements, I will give a brief update. Previously, there was an open letter from the Northern Ireland Teachers' Council (NITC), and we said that we were going to respond to that, positively. This week, we started engagement sessions with principals. I had one yesterday, and we will have sessions tomorrow and Friday and two more sessions with principals. We are starting that work, now, and hopefully, in the coming weeks, we will be able to come back and update you on the outworkings of that. I thought that it was important to add that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you. We will move to questions. Members, indicate through the Clerk if you wish to ask a question.

I will make a start. Obviously, we have the press release. Members, it is in your tabled papers, under item 7. The plan was to discuss the wider operational issues around the SEN inquiry, and I hope that we get to those because they are important. However, since the announcement pertains to a potential impact on transport provision, I want to hear more about that. What changes are being proposed? The statement does not have a lot of detail and, already — between the statement being released and my coming into this room — I have had substantial contact from parents asking, "What does this mean for me?". This is happening imminently, it seems, and they do not understand what it means. What changes are coming down the track? It seems that they will be happening quite soon. What reassurances can you offer parents about the services that they currently receive? We will deal with that before we broaden out the discussion.

Mr Hanna: Most specifically in transport, it is twofold: one is taxis, which I will come to in a minute, and there is also a range of arrangements in place that are outwith the current transport policy. It is about looking at those, considering them and working through their detail. Obviously, I cannot go into the detail of that now because we want to be able to finalise that and communicate directly with the parents of children who may be affected.

I move now to taxis. It is interesting, because I know that some of the conversation today might be about taxis. Taxi costs have doubled over the past five years — we are sitting at about £30 million. Some of that has been driven by the increase in SEN, understandably, because more children require SEN transport. I am starting to look at that and analyse it. We certainly seem to be operating in an environment where, to some extent, the activity is monopolised by a small number of operators across the Province. One of the things that we want to do is look at how we can break that down and do it differently. Over the next number of weeks, we will be finalising plans to engage with those operators on how to make savings.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will stop you there because those questions will come. It is absolutely right that we should look at the broader stuff, but I am conscious of the fact that there will be parents watching this who will have seen the announcement and will be incredibly concerned that a service on which they rely, and require, has been taken away from them. They may read it that way. Can you give us any idea what it means? Hearing that there will be savings or changes to taxi provision leaves people with a lot of uncertainty. I would like a bit of clarity.

Mr Hanna: I have to be honest. I cannot give absolute assurances on every taxi service, but, as I said, we are operating in a monopolised environment. We need to work hard with our operators. I hope that we can work with them to find a negotiated position where we can get a price point that is reasonable for what the market delivers. If that is the case, I imagine that the majority of services will continue to operate in the way in which they are operating for parents now. However, if we find ourselves in a difficult position with some of our operators, it may mean that we will need to look at alternatives. That could be cancelling contracts, potentially; changing contacts; or re-tendering, which might mean a change of provider. In some circumstances, it might mean that we have to look at parental payments, which is something that we do already. Our position is clear: the taxi costs that the EA is bearing are unreasonable. Some of them are extortionate. We need our colleagues in the taxi industry to realise that they need to move away from that position; otherwise, it will become unsustainable in the long term.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Again, I know that there is a wider discussion to be had on that, and we have covered it regularly. The Committee has watched the increase year-on-year, concerns have been registered and I have no doubt that that will be discussed today, but can you offer any assurance to a parent who is expecting the service to be available on Monday morning that it will not be taken away? I can respond only to the questions that I am receiving today, which ask, "What is happening to my service?".

Mr Hanna: Parents will not see a change in the next number of days. Any change will be communicated to parents in a timely way to give them notice of a service changing or that things will be different. We are starting to plan how we communicate with taxi operators. It will not happen overnight — we would not do that — and we will communicate about it, but we will act quickly to effect as many savings as we can across the remainder of the financial year.

I am confident in saying that I expect to see most of the changes take effect from the start of the next school term: the start of January. That is a loose — "loose" is not the right word — timeline. It is the indicative timeline for us to work with the taxi industry towards a resolution.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Can you give me an assurance, Dale, that you will keep the Committee updated and that, as soon as that crystallises into what operational reality will look like, we will hear about it?

Mr Hanna: Absolutely.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I have no doubt that, on the back of this session, every member will be contacted, because even the evidence that we have heard so far will have caused substantial anxiety. I do not like scaremongering, and I do not want that here; I am just responding to what I have heard even since the press release.

Mr Hanna: I do not want to be a scaremonger. We recognise the huge impact of some of the decisions that we have had to take as an organisation, but, unfortunately, they are in the limited areas where we can make savings. We will work at pace with colleagues across our providers to identify and make the savings that we need and to minimise their impact on service users. We will try to do that quickly but give parents reasonable notice should things need to change.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Other members may want to pick up on some of that stuff.

It is appropriate that we have a conversation on the broader taxis issue. From sitting on the elected reps' side, my impression is that the service is pretty ineffective. The costs seem to go up year-on-year — we are into exponential territory — but, while the service users and parents whom I engage with value the service, they do not necessarily have great confidence in it. There seem to be real issues with the reliability of provision and the year in, year out uncertainty about what provision will look like. We are all familiar with the issues arising from inappropriate provision being put in place.

Costs are clearly a huge issue. What can you do not only to bring costs down but to make the service efficient for parents? I am thinking specifically of SEN transport here. How do we make this better? We have the worst of all scenarios in that costs are rising, but, with that increased cost, parents do not see a service that is any better.

Mr Hanna: I will say something that I have probably said to the Committee previously. This is an outworking of where we are in trying to place children and our difficulty with the uncertainty about the broader capacity of the system. SEN transport is ultimately the last piece of the jigsaw of what we do for the parents. Until we know that a young person has been placed, the transport teams are not in a position to determine how they would allocate transport to that individual. Parents' sense of it, quite often, is that, after having to fight and, finally having got a place in the school, they hear us say, "It will take another week to put the transport in place". We still need to go through processes, and best practice today includes vetting. When we put a contracted provision in place, we need to make sure that the taxi drivers and escorts are vetted. Until we know where a child is placed, we are not necessarily in a position to allocate that pupil to a particular run or service. I understand how that feels for children who have been placed at the very end of the process, but it goes back to that.

Taxis are a contracted service, which means that we are expected to comply with public procurement rules. There will always be a rhythm to going out to tender, and that changes regularly. In my experience, parents really value having, for example, a named driver for 14 or 15 years, but we just cannot do that.
For me, the main thing is getting some certainty into the system of placements. The second thing is the capacity of the taxi market. In the past five or six years, the number of taxi operators has reduced by 50%. That creates huge pressure on our ability to tender work to the market, which also creates pressure on prices, because, to some extent, the taxi operators understand that there is a limited supply of them but a huge demand, which means that, in some ways, it is easier for them to charge prices that we would not normally accept.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): A couple of things flow from that. You mentioned placements. In the evidence session that we have just had, there was a big focus on educating children in their local communities. That goes in all sorts of directions at post-primary level, which is a whole other conversation, but at primary level in particular, the norm is for children to go to a school located within a pretty tight radius from their home. When you bring SEN into the mix, however, that is often not the case for SEN children. They are bussed or taxied to locations far away. I know of a child in Newtownards, in my constituency, who is driven the whole way down the Ards peninsula to go to a specialist provision in Portaferry. I know that that is not what that child's parents want. They value the provision, but they absolutely do not value that hour-long journey every day to get to school. Is there something else that can be done, in bringing the costs down, that would also be of benefit to parents? How far away are we from being able to place children nearer to their home and their peers in their community? It is about not just finding the right number of places but finding them in the right place.

Mr Hanna: We are still working on that. We need our schools to come on board and offer that provision. We have talked about that. It is nearly a case of kicking over the domino in the right way so that those schools will be the ones that the children will go to, and, by extension, we will not need to transport children so far. We transport some children long distances or for quite a long time even though they might travel a relatively short distance, just because they are in an urban area. I absolutely agree with you that it is critical that we get the right placement in the right place. That will have an impact.

The fact that we have a disaggregated and fragmented school transport system is also a factor. At one time, we probably had a robust system in which so many children went to x number of special schools, fewer children attended specialist settings or specialist units in schools, and the taxi and transport network was robust and was built around that. Increasingly, however, we have had to respond to emerging issues around placements and place children in schools in which we would not normally place them. In reality, the only way to respond to that from the transport perspective is to provide a taxi.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I have a final question, because we are pushed for time and I want to make sure that other members can come in. I want to move on to the workforce piece, which is also mentioned in your briefing. It is a really important part of what we are looking at, particularly around how the education system interacts with the health system to ensure that the additional workers who are needed to provide specialist health inputs are available to the system. The brief states, in summary, that there are:

I feel as though we have been hearing that for a long time. I acknowledge that some of that sits at departmental level, but how long can we go on talking about what workforce we need to put the right inputs into the system for children with special educational needs when there is no overarching policy framework or agreement on how health interacts with that system? Surely that cannot continue. What can we do to improve that situation?

Dr Tomas Adell (Education Authority): You are absolutely right. It is not a tenable position. A lot of discussion on the policy framework has to be between the Departments, departmental officials and others. What we are doing is working actively with the health service to find local solutions to provide the services to children and young people. I am not saying that it is perfect, but there are good examples of where things are going right. For example, community nursing is based in some special schools, and that is one way to find a local solution to the problem of having access to nursing in a school.

We have lots of engagement in special schools with health services around speech and language occupational therapy. We need to have more of that, of course, but there are local solutions to those problems. Corporately, we work with the health trusts and the strategic planning and performance group (SPPG) — the health commissioning body — to see if we can build in good practices that exist at local levels and to roll them out to all trust areas. There is active engagement with the health service. That is a priority for us, but I cannot give you a timeline. I met health officials two weeks ago, and we will be meeting again within the next two weeks. We are trying to find solutions, but there are no easy answers.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): To be clear, you are operating at an operational level where, between the two Departments, there is no clear overarching policy framework governance structure around this.

Dr Adell: I cannot answer that question. We are trying to find operational solutions in a very difficult and challenging context. There are obviously lots of pressures in the health service and the education sector, and that is not making things easy, but we are trying to find solutions. We are looking to the future and to local impact teams (LITs), for example. As we stabilise the new service change, we are looking at future phases, which would be to expand to include health services to those teams. That is a natural setting for some children, so that planning work is starting. We cannot give you an answer right now, but, early in the new year, we can come back with thoughts on how things could look. Again, however, that requires a workforce, cooperation and funding.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is perhaps something to pick up. All of this is evidence for the inquiry report, but there is a need to get the two relevant Ministers in front of the Health and Education Committees to try to bottom this out. I do not know how long it is tenable to be in a situation where we do not have that appropriate policy framework agreement on how we get the two Departments to work together to deliver operational solutions. Maybe that is for discussion for after the evidence session.

Mr Sheehan: The last time that you were here, Dale, with Richard, I asked you about the two Audit Office reports and the PAC report, which said that the EA was not able to demonstrate value for money despite the hundreds of millions of pounds that were being poured into it. I asked you whether the EA had identified any efficiencies or wastage, and the answer was no. Now, we see that letter today. There are issues with the taxi service, a 50p increase in school meals, the music service, suspending referrals to education other than at school (EOTAS) and ending some agency contracts overtime payments. How come that is all happening within a couple of weeks? A couple of weeks ago you had not identified any wastage to us.

Mr Hanna: With regard to the language of "wastage", those are efficiencies. We have not put up the price of school meals since 2017, and during that period there have been inflationary pressures. Costs have gone up by about 35%, and we have actively tried to absorb as much of that as possible. There is a cost to parents for the music service.

The organisation has tried to absorb that cost and to find ways to mitigate it, but it has come to the point —.

Mr Sheehan: I understand that. My issue is this: on 23 October, you wrote to principals telling them to take any and all possible actions to reduce expenditure. You even told them not to use their accumulated surpluses to hire substitute teachers. The last time that you were before the Committee, I gave you the example of a taxi that goes to a school every day to take food containers 50 yds across the playground. I asked you how much that cost per week, and I think that you said it cost £100 to £120. I have done some digging and found that it is £500 a week. The taxi driver brings the containers to the specialist provision classes and sits there with the meter running until the containers come back out, and he does that five days a week. There are other taxi drivers who take children with special needs to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. They get £800 a week for doing that, and the taxi company that they work for also gets a percentage, which is at least 12·5%. The taxi driver gets £800 a week, and that is the only work that he does all week.

Take the example of the taxi driver who delivers the food containers. I could ask my 13-year-old daughter to come up with a solution to that, and I have no doubt that she would come up with a solution that would cost less than £100 a week. That is a clear case of wastage. The schools know that — it is them that come and tell us about it. You are sending letters to schools saying, "You all have to play your part. You can't spend your accumulated surplus", when they see wastage, day in, day out. How do you marry those two things?

Mr Hanna: I disagree with you on the costs that you described. I am glad that you raised that, because it will help for me to provide some clarification. The taxi run in the particular circumstances to which you referred costs £29 per day. It goes back to schools responding. The background there is that that school set up specialist provision in mainstream schools (SPiMS). The normal catering model is that children go to the dining rooms in the schools. We have an efficient catering service. It is a busy period for our staff there when they serve the meals. In the particular circumstance that you raised, the principal wants children to be served in their classroom. Transporting meals requires trolleys and other types of equipment, and we need to do health and safety risk assessments, but our staff are busy serving in the kitchen. It is not in their job description to transport meals, neither is it in some of the school —.

Mr Sheehan: Dale.

Mr Hanna: I need to finish this point —.

Mr Sheehan: No. Hold on a second.

Mr Hanna: Chair, I need to finish the point.

Mr Sheehan: Listen. First of all, the information that I got came from one of the governors of the school. Secondly, I am saying to you that a child could come up with a solution to deal with the issue of moving food trolleys 50 yds across a school playground that would not cost anywhere near the amount that is currently paid out.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Dale, I will give you the opportunity to clarify the point of fact that you wanted to clarify and to address the wider question, and then we will have to move on to the next question.

Mr Hanna: I agree that we will be able to come up with other solutions, but there will be a cost to them.

We will probably have to agree to disagree on the costs associated with the case that Pat raised. As I understand it, the cost is £29 per day. It is a contracted cost; there is no taxi fare sitting with the meter running — not that I am aware of.

I will give an example. The cost to the organisation of one hour of catering assistant time is £26·55. Whatever the alternative solution may be, it will involve either paying staff to do additional duties or giving them additional time. We will work with trade unions to come up with a solution to amend job descriptions in the intervening time. To get back to the point, however, and bearing in mind that some of the criticism that we have had from the Committee in the past is that we do not listen to schools, that principal asked that the children be served their meals in a classroom, and we agreed to that. To do that and respond quickly, we put in place the taxi arrangement. If we are sitting here in two years' time and you are saying, "Dale, you still have a taxi service in there", I will completely agree that we have not been doing our jobs properly. However, it will still cost more money, because we will have to pay each member of staff some sort of additionality to transport the meals. Be it 50 yds, 100 yds or whatever distance, there will still be an additional cost.

Just for the record, if, at AN Other school or in a different sets of circumstances, you think that there is a taxi operator getting that sort of money for doing a school meals run, I want to know about it, because, clearly, I would agree with you that that is not value for money. However, as I understand it from the information that I have on the case that you raised the last time we were here, it costs £29 a day. If I were to put in a catering assistant to do it for one hour, it would cost £26·55. I am content that what we are doing represents value for money within our current operating constraints.

Mr Sheehan: What about the issue of taxi drivers who are taking kids to school getting £800 a week?

Mr Hanna: Again, at the outset, I agree with you: we have a monopoly situation where a small number of taxi operators across the Province are overcharging. I agree with you and with the Committee on that. There are some circumstances to explain why we do it. Remember that some of our model is about vetting and safeguarding. We require a named driver and a named escort before we will award a contract. That rules out some of the bigger operators, because they work on a rank basis and do not want to bid for work with the EA. Over the past five years, there has been a 50% reduction in the number of licensed taxi operators. Yes, I believe that taxi operators have seen an opportunity to charge the Education Authority too much for taxi work, and, as I said at the outset, we will be actively engaging and working hard to try to reduce that cost in the remainder of this financial year and into the next financial year.

Mr Sheehan: I have a quick question on the suspension of further referrals to EOTAS. Does that mean that there are kids who are being referred from their schools to EOTAS or by the EA to EOTAS and that will not happen any more?

Mr Hanna: My understanding is that, as we come into this time of the year, we will be using some community and voluntary service providers, but, given our belief that there is sufficient capacity within our own provision, there will be a movement away from using the community and voluntary sector and towards maximising the capacity that we have in our own EA-operated centres. I just know that at a high level, Deputy Chair.

Mr Sheehan: Will every child or young person who needs a placement in EOTAS get a placement?

Mr Hanna: My understanding is that it is about not using the community and voluntary sector and that there is sufficient capacity, but, again, we can come back with more detail.

Mr Sheehan: That does not really answer my question, Dale.

Mr Hanna: Personally, I am not in a position to be able to answer that question because it relates to a different part of the organisation.

Mr Sheehan: OK, fair enough. Thanks, Dale.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is one that we want to follow up on. There are a number of things arising from the press release that we need to follow up on, and we will come to that at the end of the briefing.

Mrs Mason: I want to move on to the workforce aspect. How many job vacancies are there currently in LITs?

Dr Adell: There are approximately 30 job vacancies. We are actively recruiting at the moment.

Mrs Mason: Are those all teacher-grade roles, or does that number include all job roles in LITs?

Dr Adell: The majority are teacher-grade roles.

Mrs Mason: The majority. You do not have a split.

Dr Adell: Not on me, no.

Mrs Mason: In total, it is about 30.

Dr Adell: It is about 30. Those are posts that have become vacant that we need to fill. They are existing posts, not new posts: just to make that clear.

Mrs Mason: Are there new posts to be advertised as well?

Dr Adell: We are not expanding the workforce; we are filling posts that have become vacant where people have left for various reasons. We are not increasing the size of the workforce.

Mrs Mason: So, you are filling the gaps that are there currently.

Dr Adell: Basically, yes.

Mrs Mason: Are they being advertised and actively recruited for at the moment?

Dr Adell: They are being actively recruited. I am not sure whether the advertisement is out yet. They will be advertised very shortly, if they have not been advertised yet.

Mrs Mason: OK. When do you expect those posts to be filled?

Dr Adell: As soon as our processes allow them to be filled. We hope that that will be quickly, but, obviously, we have to go through the normal HR processes to advertise, make sure that we get the right people to interview and all of those things.

Mrs Mason: Of course, yes. Do you have any idea of how many staff are out on sick leave at this time?

Dr Adell: Across LITs?

Mrs Mason: Yes.

Dr Adell: I do not have exact numbers, but it is not a high percentage.

Mrs Mason: OK. Did you see the evidence session with the special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs)? Did you have any takeaway from it? Have you actively done anything since that?

Dr Adell: We actively work with SENCOs on a regular basis. There have been a number of training sessions with SENCOs, and we recently created and shared one-pagers of information for SENCOs.

Mrs Mason: I did not take from that evidence session that SENCOs need training.

Dr Adell: It is training information about how the LIT system works. We know that SENCOs' time pressures are high. We cannot adjust those at this point, but we are helping SENCOs with the new local impact team processes. That is the content of the training sessions that we are giving. In general, they have been received very well. The number of negative comments that we have received about LITs has reduced significantly, as SENCOs have become more used to how the system works. Feedback from SENCOs, overall, is that it is going in the right direction. There is an acceptance that there were teething problems at the beginning, but they are starting to be overcome. There is a capacity issue in the LIT service and it cannot meet the needs of all of the children. That is a known capacity problem, and we cannot overcome it unless we have additional funding.

Mr Hanna: We have listened to SENCOs, and it has been really compelling. When we talk about the engagement with principals around placements, one of the things that we are actively looking at is how we can support schools. We are listening. We know the creation of specialist provision, for example, puts pressure on the SENCO as well, so one of the things that we are actively looking at, and for which we have proposals that we are very close to finalising, is building in additional SENCO time and SENCO release where schools make a decision to step up to the plate and take on additional provision. Cathy, we are listening. It is not being ignored. We acknowledge the fact that SENCOs play a critical part in the system — at LIT level and specialist provision level. We are listening, and we have proposals that will, hopefully, mitigate some of the pressures on them.

Mrs Mason: That is good, Dale. You came out and spoke to SENCOs — I accept that. I am glad to hear that there are proposals and that it is not just about providing training for SENCOs. You have cleared that up. I am sure that they will be keen to see what the proposals are.

Why are we being told that, with LITs, children are not getting taught and not getting literacy support?

Dr Adell: I cannot answer that question, because that is not what our evidence shows us. The number of one-to-one sessions for children has not reduced with LITs. Rather, it is increasing. We are not seeing fewer children.

Mrs Mason: Can you give any indication why we would be told the complete opposite?

Mr Hanna: I will be honest: as I have said before, some sets of staff have been unhappy about the movement from the traditional services, which were provided by the legacy education and library boards, to implementation of local impact teams and provision of intervention services at a more holistic, multi-service level.

Mrs Mason: Yes, Dale. We have gone over that before. Are you telling me that the literacy teachers are teaching the exact same amount as they were prior to LITs?

Mr Hanna: I am not saying —. You asked why somebody would say that. I am saying that there remains an element of resistance to the new model.

Mrs Mason: No, that is not the question that I am asking. I am asking if literacy teachers are providing the same level of one-to-one support to those children. We are being told that they are not.

Dr Adell: On a service level, yes.

Mrs Mason: Why are we being told that they are not?

Dr Adell: I cannot respond on individual teachers but, on service levels, yes, it is the same numbers.

Mrs Mason: The same teaching time and same support is being given to children?

Dr Adell: There is no less one-to-one support in the LIT model than what there was in the previous models. That is not what the LIT service is. It provides the same support. Our hope is that LITs will actually provide more direct one-to-one support, because it is a more efficient model.

Mrs Mason: OK. I will be brief, Chair. We have been told that even if the LIT service was fully resourced and staffed — there are 30 vacancies at the moment — it would not be fit for purpose. What do you say to that?

Dr Adell: I strongly refute that. It is a service in which we are wrapping around the child. We are looking at having one referral point for a child so that we can provide the service that is required for that child, rather than having eight referral points and eight different services. This will now meet the child's needs. It is not siloed —.

Mrs Mason: Tomas, I accept that, because, when I listen to that, it sounds very sensible, but we also listen to SENCOs who say that that is not the case.

Dr Adell: I am not a SENCO, so I do not know their exact position. I imagine that their biggest challenge is that children who they want to refer do not meet our thresholds because we do not have enough capacity.

Mrs Mason: What are the criteria for children to receive one-to-one support?

Dr Adell: A child's need is assessed by a moderation panel to see if —.

Mrs Mason: What are the actual criteria? What do they have to hit to receive one-to-one support?

Dr Adell: They need to be deemed by the assessment panel to have enough need and to be placed high enough on the waiting list, frankly. The problem is that the support services offered in LITs — the total staff numbers — have remained more or less static for quite a period, but the number of children at stage 2 is increasing. The proportion of stage 2 children who can receive one-to-one LIT support is going down, not because the number of children in LIT services is going down but because a higher number of children could qualify for a LIT service. I expect most SENCOs to be very frustrated about the children whom they see as having a need that should be met at stage 2 but that cannot be met because of capacity limits.

Mrs Mason: So we are not meeting the needs of those children.

Dr Adell: The service cannot meet the need in the way that we want to meet it, because we do not have the capacity and funding to do so. When we have limited funding, we can only provide limited service.

Mrs Mason: Tomas, we hear, in report after report, about money not being well spent in the EA.

Mr Hanna: I appreciate that, but I remind members that, as we have spoken about before, we have moved away from a discrepancy model that was essentially focused on a certain core of children who had a particular IQ range, and under which they were the only children who could ever access literacy services. Through the local impact teams model, we have removed the discrepancy model and opened up access to literacy services for all our children. Now, there is —.

Mrs Mason: So more children are getting the support. Is that what you are saying?

Mr Hanna: My point is —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Dale, I appreciate that there is a lot to this. I am going to draw a line under it, not because I think that it does not warrant discussion but, first, because we are up against it with time and, secondly, because we have scheduled an evidence specifically on LITs, and that will be our opportunity to really get into the detail. You can make a comment, and then we will move on; otherwise, we will simply not get round every member.

Dr Adell: I can provide a written briefing to the Committee with numbers on LITs, and we can show the evidence that way. Is that OK?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Yes.

Mrs Mason: Yes, please; that would be great. Thank you.

Mrs Guy: Thank you, folks. At the start, I have to say that I am really impressed with the briefing. I have sometimes been critical of the quality of the briefings that we get, but what you sent us is really good, so I want to acknowledge that.

I am already getting contact from parents of children with SEN about transport issues. One parent made a really fair point when she said:

Those are fair questions given that, today, you have characterised the costs as "extortionate".

Mr Hanna: The issue is twofold. This year is different. In many past years, the financial position has not been as stark as has been articulated to us now. We have faced real pressure to make savings in-year.

Mrs Guy: If costs were extortionate, were we not already looking at making those savings? We already knew that the pressures were there.

Mr Hanna: We were looking at that. We would have wanted to bring those savings in in a more phased and planned way across school years; we would not have wanted to do it all initially. We also looked at other ways to mitigate costs by operating our fleet slightly differently, purchasing vehicles and trying to offset the most expensive runs. The transport teams started to analyse the information that was available to them. There has been an emerging issue with cost. We are now at a point of the straw breaking the camel's back. We have to make savings right now. I have said to the teams that we need to put a real focus on this and start to look at those costs because they just are not sustainable, either in the current financial year or in future financial years. We want to do that bit of work, but I acknowledge your point.

Mrs Guy: Thanks, Dale. The Committee has had a focus on nursing provision in special schools, which is a really big concern. What contact have you had with special schools about their nursing provision and the threat to it?

Dr Adell: I have spent a lot of time going round special schools, and nursing provision is one of the things that I have been very intent on speaking about. There is a clear understanding that we need stable nursing provision. There are a lot of different thoughts on and options for what that might look like. The universal view is that we need to have school nursing in some shape or form in special schools but that not all special schools require nursing at all times. That is the view of principals of special schools. It is about finding the right balance and seeing how we can best use those resources. Currently, provision differs a lot across different schools.

Mrs Guy: I want to get your view on the Health Minister's response to a question for written answer that I tabled. He said:

Do you agree with that?

Dr Adell: That is a slightly different issue, because that answer is about nursing needs. The nursing needs of children are, of course, met in some shape or form, but the question is how we can best meet them.

Mrs Guy: Is it your understanding that they have had nursing provision available for the past two years? From my understanding, certainly, I am not sure that that is quite accurate.

Dr Adell: Nursing provision is available. The question is how the nursing provision is available. One special school that I visited recently has children with profound disabilities. The fact that community nursing is based in that school allows children to go directly from being discharged from hospital on one day to attending school the next day. That is not possible if there is not nursing on-site. Having nursing on-site is not the same thing as meeting nursing needs. Those are two separate things.

Mrs Guy: I think that they understand the difference.

Dr Adell: It depends on how we answer the question. Of course, the nursing needs are met from a healthcare perspective, because that is what health services generally do, but how can we maximise the support in nursing to make sure that we get the best outcome for our special schools? That is a slightly different question.

Mrs Guy: Absolutely.

Dr Adell: That is what we are trying to find solutions for. I have been in contact with Health officials to see how we can think outside the box to do things differently. How can we arrange school nursing in a different way to get solutions? Can we think of our special schools as a network? We only have 40 special schools, therefore the school nursing provision should not be looked at on a school-by-school basis but as a network. If you go for the model of appointing one school nurse to one school, it would mean that, as soon as that one nurse were to be absent for some reason, the school would be without support, so that would not work.

We have to think differently about how to get the best use. What need do we have in the schools? How can we use school nurses' skills in the best way possible? That is a slightly different question and ask from saying, "We need school nursing". That is what we are actively working on. We will be meeting Health officials again in the next couple of weeks to see whether we can think outside the box to find solutions that work for everyone.

Mrs Guy: You will probably find that schools think that how it was working was fine. There is a concern that, now, if an emergency happens and a nurse is not on-site for those kids with profound needs, you are putting them at risk and transferring that risk to people who are not medically trained to deal with it.

I will move on to SPiMs.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): A very brief one, Michelle.

Mrs Guy: Yes. I will make it as quick as I possibly can. It is about the workforce for SPiMS. We know that the amount of SPiMS has increased. Where are you finding the resource for that? Where are the teachers coming from to resource our SPiMs?

Mr Hanna: It is a difficult ask. Again, it comes back to the fact that, if we could get certainty on where SPiMS will be, it would allow us, as an organisation, to go out, support the schools and try to recruit from the teaching workforce. We know that we have to run a pilot, particularly around classrooms. In locality east, we set up a scheme to try to recruit collectively. I do not know whether Robbie wants to go into that in a bit of detail.

Mrs Guy: I have not got much time, but this is what I am trying to get to: is it highly inexperienced teachers who are coming into those settings? I assume that you would have a concern about that. Are they picking things up on the job? Are they skilled and trained enough to come into those classes?

Mr Hanna: The reality is that it is a mix, Michelle, but the newly trained teachers are likely to come into schools as new teachers. Although it is down to schools, when we engage with them, we suggest that they try to utilise some of the more experienced teachers to move into the SPiMS environment and allow their new teachers to get their first year in the mainstream classes. We acknowledge that that is an issue.

One of the other things that we are looking at in the proposals to support SPiMS is some dedicated time between, roughly, April and June when we do some broader whole-school training. That would mean that we could increase the number of teachers and classroom assistants who access the specialist training that we provide. Schools have said to us that it is about more than just the specialist provision; it is also about how they deal with challenging behaviours in the mainstream and how they deal with a situation in which a teacher or classroom assistant is off sick one day. We hear that. One of the proposals is that we have a dedicated bespoke package of training and support that we deliver during the third term to the new schools that step up to the plate.

Mr Robbie McGreevy (Education Authority): Chair, I know that you are tight for time.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We are officially out of time, so you need to be very brief.

Mr McGreevy: One of the big issues was not about teachers, because there are ways of working; it was about getting classroom assistants into the units. We listened to the feedback that we received from school leaders and put in place a pilot in the area in which it is hardest to place, which is Belfast and Newtownabbey. That is running at the moment. We are getting good feedback from schools in that regard. We do all the initial advertising, put together a pool, do all the checks, make sure that they have the experience and make sure that the AccessNI checks are all done and in place. When a school needs somebody quickly, we have a list of people available, and we give it the names. The school then interviews those people and decides whether to appoint them. Previously, that process took maybe 13 weeks or 14 weeks. We have cut that period right down. The pilot is still running. We will assess it at the end of the year, and there will probably be some lessons, but the initial feedback is very positive.

Mr Burrows: Chair, I am keen to talk for just two minutes.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Apologies, Jon.

Mr Burrows: Yes —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Sorry, Jon. I am bringing in members in the order in which they indicated.

Mr Burrows: Sorry. I thought that you had finished with everyone. My mistake. Apologies, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is fine. No problem.

Mr Baker: Thank you. I have wholly changed where I was going to go with my questions. Dale, I can already see a problem with the training stuff. April and June, right? Why not in August, when the teachers are back in but before the kids come back? I am not a teacher, but my problem with April and June is that you are going to be taking people out of the classroom who are very much needed for those children.

Mr Hanna: We need to finalise our proposal through working with and listening to schools, but it is that we will allow those teachers to move out, and, obviously, there would have to be substitute cover for the classes that they are out of.

Mr Baker: I just do not get that, Dale. I am going to hazard a guess: do you do your training in August?

Mr Hanna: I do training throughout the year, but I am not going to disagree with you, Danny. It may well be that some of the training will be delivered during August. It is not going to be set in stone. We are developing a package, based on the feedback that we are getting from schools. We are trying to finalise that. At a high level, we are saying that it will be towards the end of the next school year, in preparation for the new school year. Remember that we are going to have to provide that training to potentially over 100 schools, so there is a logistical issue there as well that we need to work our way through.

Mr Baker: I appreciate that. Again, Dale, that comes down to the situation that we are in due to years of bad planning, to be honest. After you leave here today, we are going to have more questions. School leaders and SENCOs are saving the bacon of the EA and DE. There is no question about that. I guarantee you that we will have 100 questions tomorrow from them about what you have said today. They are not going to believe a single word that has been said, because what we hear from them is a complete contrast to how you are portraying the situation. I am sure that steam is flying out of the ears of many of them. Did I hear that 30 staff, which is about 11% or 15% of LIT teachers, now need to be recruited?

Dr Adell: We have made progress by way of full-time equivalents of about 200. The headcount is always higher.

Mr Baker: How can you say that more children are getting the service if there is a huge gap in the staff?

Dr Adell: That gap existed before as well. That is what I am trying to say. I am sorry that I was not clear enough, and I apologise. We are not increasing the LITs base, because we do not have the investment to do that. I would love to increase the LITs. We could provide a much better service if we had bigger LITs, but we do not have the budget to do it. It is that simple.

Mr Baker: The LIT has been set up almost as a flagship; as this is where we need to go. I am not going through all the names, but we know that we do not have the allied health professionals there. This was set up as the thing that was going to change things. However, we already hearing that they have problems that are way beyond teething problems. There is a wee bit of blaming, when you say "resistance", Dale, to be honest. I pick up from LITs right across the region that this is not good: it is really bad. It is not child-centred, and the teaching time is not happening. It is almost like telling teachers to suck eggs.

Dr Adell: If you give me examples off the record, I can investigate. That is not what I am hearing. We are hearing different things. I want to fix the issue, because the way in which the LIT model is set up and should work is more efficient wrapping around the child to provide better support for children and more one-to-one support. That is the intention. It is not the intention to remove teachers from one-to-one support of children.

Mr Baker: It may be the intention, but that is not what is happening. That is what we are told.

Dr Adell: I am told by LIT members, when I speak to them, that they see more children. I do not say that you are wrong, but it is not what I am hearing. If you give me examples, I can go and investigate. If I hear one thing and you say another, that is a problem for me.

Mr Baker: It is also difficult for teachers to come forward, to be brutally honest. That is why they come to us and give us that idea of exactly what is going on. Teachers are probably watching this session. That is what I mean: there will probably be 100 questions waiting for us tomorrow on the back of the evidence that you give today.

Dr Adell: If there is a problem in the service, I cannot fix it unless I know the details of the problem.

Mr Baker: A lot of it was pointed out in the evidence session with the SENCOs. To be fair, it was hard-hitting.

Dr Adell: The biggest challenge for SENCOs is that we do not have capacity in the service. They want to refer children whom we cannot see. However, if you have questions that are asked afterwards, send them to us, and I will respond to you. I give you that absolute assurance.

Mr Baker: I appreciate that. I do not want to spend longer on this. I will move on quickly to the transport side of it. I am sure that we all agree that the communication side was probably the worst that it has been this year. It was diabolical, if I am honest. My question is this: has there been investment from DE to the EA teams to do that job? I know that it is not easy for them to work out the transport. Are they still doing it with pen and paper, or is it being digitised?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I need a brief answer on that. I need to move on.

Mr Hanna: There are two things. I would not categorise the situation as "diabolical". It was certainly difficult for a number of children at the end.

Mr Baker: It was awful for families. It was diabolical.

Mr Hanna: I do not disagree with you that it was difficult for a number of parents and families, but it was not diabolical across the whole of the transport service. It was —.

Mr Baker: It was diabolical for the same ones who are always impacted the most. That is the reality.

Mr Hanna: I know, but I am also trying to —.

Mr Baker: I understand that 90,000 kids go through transport. I get that, but when you are talking about the system making these children the most vulnerable children, it is not that they are vulnerable; you are making them vulnerable.

Mr Hanna: I also do not want it to be presented that every child who has a SEN has a really poor experience in the allocation of transport. I do not diminish what you say, but I cannot sit here and accept the word "diabolical" for —.

Mr Baker: It was hundreds.

Mr Hanna: I am not sure that it was hundreds.

Mr Baker: I do because I have heard that from many of them.

Mr Hanna: In terms of —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Can you get to the question on investment and answer that quickly?

Mr Hanna: Absolutely. At the moment, we have systems in place, and we are developing a business case to bring in more digitally enhanced systems to help us to improve our route planning. Data itself is not going to be the solution because —

Mr Baker: Why not?

Mr Hanna: — we can have all the best digital route planning in place, but, until the children are placed in a named school, we do not know to where we are route planning those children.

Mr Baker: I —.

Mr Hanna: Absolutely, as a logistical service, we want to have the best technology in place, and we have a case in place.

Mr Baker: The teams still work with pen and paper.

Mr Hanna: They use other digital systems. They use GIS and Microsoft. It is not that they sit with pen and paper and it is like a quill pen, Danny. Absolutely, we would prefer to have the most up-to-date digital route-planning systems. Equally, if I get the most up-to-date digital route-planning systems in the morning, some of the issues that you have raised will still pertain, because, ultimately, that will not improve until we address the issue, which is that more schools take on specialist provisions.

Mr Baker: It is about communication when you have the best systems in place.

Mr Hanna: We absolutely want that. Equally, we know that there are huge conflicting pressures on capital investment. A lot of money is being spent on the construction of special schools and all the SPiMS etc, but, hopefully, we can get the investment.

Mr Baker: When you raise something —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will draw a line under that one.

Mr Middleton: Thanks, guys, for your presentation. I also welcome your clarity. Obviously, the savings measures will cause some concern, but I think that your clarification of the immediate potential impact should bring some reassurance. That said, the £40 million taxi bill is completely unsustainable, so I really hope that those providers will work with you, because that cannot continue into the future.

Sticking with the issue of transport, in your briefing paper, you said that 42% of your EA fleet is exceeding its recommended lifespan, which is obviously another time bomb, if you like, in respect of pressure. What measures are being put in place to address that? There are clearly savings to be made. Are any contingencies being put in place as to a potential issue arising from that area?

Mr Hanna: The pressure there is that, primarily, it costs more on our resource budget to maintain the fleet because vehicles require more time to be spent and more parts to be replaced because they are older vehicles. If they are older vehicles, the chances are that their fuel economy is not as efficient as the more modern vehicles. As for contingency, it is about making the case for investment in the EA fleet. The difficulty is that, to make that case, we are making the case against all the other conflicting capital requirements that are required across the education system. It is difficult, and what tends to happen is this: if we need to build a SPiM, we need to build a SPiM, but can we keep the bus going for another year? Yes, we can keep the bus going for another year, but we will get to the point where the fleet becomes unsustainable.

Mr Middleton: That is a funding issue, unfortunately.

Mr Hanna: Yes. We are absolutely making the case to the Department that we need to increase the investment in the home-to-school transport fleet. Ultimately, if it reached the point at which we were unable to operate our own vehicles, we would have to reach out and ask Translink to provide more services or seek to put in place more privately operated buses.

Mr Middleton: That could increase the cost.

Mr Hanna: It could potentially increase the cost, but, moving forward in respect of transport more generally, we need to look at the model of transport provision around what we provide, what Translink provides and what private operators can provide. I think that there are efficiencies to be achieved by looking at that mixed model and being a bit more discerning about how we operate vehicles, how Translink operates and how we utilise the private sector as well.

Mr Middleton: What do the staffing vacancies in EA transport look like? Are there shortages there as well?

Mr Hanna: There is an industry-wide shortage of drivers across all areas, be they HGV drivers or PSV drivers. Recently, through our pay and grading review, we were able to increase the pay for the lower bands. The differential between an EA bus driver and a Translink bus driver has dissipated to some extent. We have pockets of pressure there. It can be difficult to recruit at times, but the pressure has not been as bad as it has been previously.

Mr Middleton: Is the driver academy that was planned still going ahead for January?

Mr Hanna: Yes, we are planning to go ahead with that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): It is probably a natural follow-on to ask about the multi-pupil vehicles that were bought and which you referred to in your briefing. Only two of them are in operation. There was substantial spend on that. Very briefly, can you give any assurances around that? You are making a case for capital investment, and nine out of 11 vehicles are sitting not being used.

Mr Hanna: It is an interesting way to characterise it, Chair. We made a case, and we got the money. We knew that that would be about planning for this school year. We made a reasonable assumption. We put out an ad for drivers in April 2025, and we had close to 80 applicants. We thought that it would be a really attractive post because they do not have to have a bus driving licence. As it transpired, we were able to recruit only five individuals from that, two of whom are operating now. The other three are about to operate. We are now in the process of trying to recruit to that.

We planned reasonably that we would have those vehicles operating sooner than now, but, when it came to the recruitment, we were a little surprised at the fact that it was not as attractive a post as we expected it to be.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Out of 80 applicants, you could recruit only five.

Mr Hanna: A significant number withdrew, and, by the time we went through the process and did our checks, we managed to appoint only five individuals. As I understand it, we are out now recruiting. It is not that we are deliberately letting those vehicles sit —

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): You have said —.

Mr Hanna: — but they are there and will be utilised as soon as we get the drivers for them.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): To be clear, I am not trying to characterise it that anybody is happy that they are sitting there and not being used, but it is a point of fact that they are not being used. That is the case, and it is a potential model that could have delivered a more cost-effective service.

Mr Hanna: It is one model. The approach is that, if we can get the drivers there, it will allow us to manage the private sector a bit differently by saying, "Do you know what, guys? We do not like what you are doing over there. We are going to do that ourselves", but we would not be looking to extend that much more extensively than what we have at the moment.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): OK.

Mr Brooks: I will stay on the matter of the fleet for the moment. In your briefing, you mentioned the legislative and environmental pressures and the impact that the Climate Change Act that was brought through this place will have in requiring a 48% reduction by 2030. Have you estimated what it will cost over the next five years to meet that target?

Mr Hanna: I do not have that figure. Our greater challenge has been to procure the types of vehicles — whether hybrid or electric — that meet our standard and getting the infrastructure in place. Translink is clearly set up as a transport operator. To some extent, while EA operates the third-biggest fleet of vehicles on the island of Ireland, we are in the business of supporting all education services, so that is one part of our business. How we can sustain the EA fleet moving forward in the context of that and other constraints is a challenge for us.

Mr Brooks: I imagine that, given the size of the fleet that you have just outlined, that would be a significant pressure. I guess — I am trying to pick up what the next point is that I was going to make there. You have said that the buses —. No, hold on a second; sorry.

Mr Hanna: It is OK not to have a question. [Laughter.]

Mr Brooks: No, I do. I do, but —. [Inaudible.] [Laughter.]

Mr Hanna: It is a really hard question. [Laughter.]

Mr Brooks: This might be outside your remit: is the legislation that we currently have around taxis creating the position where there is a monopoly of companies and thereby affecting your ability to gain better pricing when you go out to the market, because the market is not there? On the back of that, when you procure lifts from those providers, is that part of your target as well, or does that target apply only to what the EA does as an entity?

Mr Hanna: We all wanted some of that legislation to bring better governance around who could and could not be taxi operators. That was done intentionally. However, we are now in a position where the response to that from the market means that there are fewer taxi operators. Working with the Department, one of the things that I want to do is to explore with officials from the Department for Infrastructure how we increase the number of taxi operators in the system, which is good for me, in terms of Education, and more widely for the public transport network and all the benefits that we talk about in having taxi operators. We all hear anecdotes about none of us being able to get taxis when socialising as well. We need to look at how we stimulate that taxi market. I can do some of that; we can do some of that through our models of procurement and how we can provide some certainty around funding and the models in the way we procure.

I am sorry; ask me the other question. I am unclear on what the second bit was.

Mr Brooks: When you go to private providers to provide transport, is that included as part of your environmental targets, or is it only the EA's fleet that counts towards that?

Mr Hanna: We look predominantly at the EA fleet, but we will probably have to factor in some contractual requirements on private operators as well. Our biggest focus is on the EA fleet.

Mr Brooks: I have one more quick question, if that is OK. I have heard parents express fears about what it might mean if their provider changes or the type of transport changes. Is there any familiarisation support available for children who have those needs so that, when their transport changes, it is not such a sudden change for them?

Mr Hanna: We have tried to develop some resources, particularly for SEN children, around what the first day on school transport would look like. In the context of the savings, and if we are moving to different providers, that provision will be relatively limited. We will try our absolute best to make sure that there is some element of lead-in time if it happens to be AN Other operator. Normally, we would ask the operator to ask the driver and the escort to introduce themselves to the family so that they can introduce them to the child. If it happens to be another driver and escort, that is what we will seek to do.

Mr Brooks: Thank you. I will come back at the end to make a suggestion.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will come to concluding actions at the end.

Mr Burrows: Thank you; that was very useful.

The budget for taxis is topping £30 million a year. Some 5,000 children every year require taxis, which is an astonishing number. I previously had figures indicating that the longest journey was two hours and 50 minutes. What is the shortest journey that any child would make in a publicly funded taxi to get to school?

Mr Hanna: A reasonable number of children travel under a mile or half a mile. We can seek to get the exact figure. We will have to figure out whether we know the exact distance in some cases. We do not procure on the basis of half a mile. Was the journey one mile, two miles, three miles or four miles? We will need to dig down to a bit more granular detail. Anecdotally, however, and from the information that I have from the local offices, we provide transport for children where the distance from home to school is relatively short.

Mr Burrows: I am very keen to get that information. It will be useful for our inquiry.

Looking further afield, I have heard that taxi numbers are down by 50%. It is clear that supply and demand factors mean that the cost of taxis can go up because there is less competition. Is the Department for Infrastructure doing anything to encourage more people to become taxi drivers?

Mr Hanna: I am not aware of that, but that does not mean that the Department for Infrastructure is not doing anything about that. I have only just started to work with our Department on engaging with the Department for Infrastructure in order to determine how we might stimulate more taxi operators into the market.

Mr Burrows: I asked that question because it is interesting for a range of issues, not just this one; for example, for our night-time economy.

My third question of four — I will be very quick — is about wheelchair-access taxis, which are much more expensive than ordinary taxis. Is that a challenge that you face? Those drivers may get a similar return, but they have a bigger outlay.

Mr Hanna: That has been a challenge. That has come with the changes to the regulations and the need for more equity of provision for all users, including disabled users. At a point in time, an operator with a disabled-access vehicle would have been able to charge a premium to the general public and to us for operating that vehicle. In the intervening period, as they have changed their vehicles, they can operate a normal taxi car and get the same rate per mile because what they can charge is capped.

A person who has a disability has the right to access public transport at the same rate as a non-disabled person. Some of the taxi operators have taken commercial decisions. Do you buy a £50,000 vehicle that is wheelchair-compliant but get only x amount of pounds per mile, or do you buy an ordinary car at half the price and still get the same income? In that intervening period, when the equity provisions were put in place, we definitely saw a drop in taxi operators providing disabled-access vehicles. They did not see a business reason to do that.

Mr Burrows: Therefore, equity provisions have actually resulted in less equity, because there are fewer of those vehicles available for the children who need them.

Mr Hanna: The way that I would characterise it is that it has driven up the demand for the limited number of vehicles and increased the cost to the Education Authority in terms of contractual requirements for such vehicles.

Mr Burrows: By the way, I think that there should be support for children. I just think that the DFI needs to incentivise in some way and to create support to encourage taxi operators and drivers to buy those vehicles.

Mr Hanna: From an EA perspective, we would be very supportive of that, because having more vehicles with disability access suits our needs from a market perspective.

Mr Burrows: I have asked the DFI about that, so I will wait for the answer.

My final question is about unintended consequences or, perhaps, foreseeable consequences. By 2035, you will have to buy only electric vehicles. Is that correct?

Mr Hanna: Yes.

Mr Burrows: That is because of net zero and climate change policies. How will that affect your budget?

Mr Hanna: As it stands, those types of vehicle are probably twice the premium of a diesel-powered vehicle, so, yes, there will be an increased capital ask. It will also make it more difficult in the long term to make a sustainable business case for the operation of the vehicles, and there will be associated infrastructure around how we charge those vehicles. Our fleet operates in a really interesting way, particularly in rural areas. Many of those drivers will have vehicles at home and operate from home, because that meets the needs in those areas. We have some logistical challenges in moving the fleet to the more environmentally friendly vehicles.

Mr Burrows: That is where I will cap it off. It seems to me that there are a lot of issues, and I will ask difficult questions. You are caught in the cross hairs of many of the Departments not working properly together or foreseeing issues when they frame and draft legislation. Thanks for your evidence; it was very useful.

Mr Hanna: Thank you, Jon.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): OK. Thank you to the witnesses from the EA. I know that you are scheduled to be in front of us again a number of times before Christmas. We appreciate your engagement with the Committee's work. Thank you for your time.