20% cut to fares for all public transport operators from April

What the other poster is talking about, is that in simple terms under EU law, a Government cannot be seen to be funding a state company to compete against a private enterprise, it would fall under all sorts of issues in relation to illegal state aid and not providing a fair marketplace.

In reality there are very little commercial services that truly compete with PSO funded services. There might be some overlap in terms of routing but generally the routes tend to be quite different in terms of structure, length and speed of service, directness of route, limited stop vs frequent stops etc.

I do think that we should all be welcoming these fare reductions on publicly funded transport networks. I understand that some people are upset that they will not benefit if they use services that are not publicly funded but that is just the way the cookie crumbles. I doubt these people would be saying it's not fair on BE customers if they got something that the BE pax didn't.

As LXFlyer has said, there is no chance that you will be seeing the transfer fare in Dublin going to €2.50 anytime soon after this, never say never, but I can't see this happening this year now. It would be politically suicide for the Government to do that, and I would expect Ms Graham in the NTA will know that and use it as leverage to get whatever funding the NTA needs to keep it lower.

I know one well connected person whom all along has maintained that the increase to €2.50 after a promotional period was because the NTA were not guaranteed the amount of funding that they felt was needed to keep it at the lower amount.

Whilst that still might be the case, recent signs have shown that perhaps the NTA are not as politically astute as they should be as you say so I'm very much on the fence with this one. I can see it from both sides. but the thing that is certain that is going to €2.50 anytime soon must surely be dead in the water. I don't see how any transport authority anywhere could defend it on top of the 20% discount being removed.

If the Government were subsidising a bus to run an almost identical type of service and an almost identical route to a commercial operation, then that would be state aid and would be illegal. But the Government are not subsidising state routes that are identical to commercial routes, which is why Expressway by Bus Eireann won't be getting any of the extra money to cover fare cuts.

The overwhelming majority of PSO services are not competing with commercial operators and even when there is some overlap, it's small and generally the routes are there to serve different kinds of customers and would be aimed at a different target market.

I hate state aid against commercial enterprises and for me it's something that really gets my goat. But trying to portray the cuts in fares to PSO services as being a form of unfair state aid is quite frankly nonsense.