Dear Mr Williams,

Thank you for your email of 14 March 2022. We acknowledge receipt of this
email under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“The Act”).

You have requested the following information in relation to cross border
bus routes:

• Please provide a full current list of all bus routes that cross the
border to and from the ROI.

• Please provide me the full fares (this should show all Single fares and
Return fares and all other fares that are sold onboard by the driver) in
both GBP and EUR for all bus routes that cross the border to and from the
ROI.

• Please provide me the full policy regarding using GBP in ROI and EUR in
NI on all cross border bus routes and details of all of the rules and
policy regarding this.

• Does accepting EUR on cross border routes add any additional costs to
you (such as any additional cash handling costs and currency exchange
costs) and if so how much extra per year does this cost you compared to if
you just handled GBP only.

Please be advised, the Act allows us up to 20 working days (excluding any
UK statutory holidays) to process a valid request for information. We may,
however, need to contact you if we require any clarifications on your
request. If no clarifications are required, you should expect to receive a
response on or before 12 April 2022.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

FOI Team - Translink

[1][email address]

[2]A close-up of a logo Description automatically generated with medium
confidence

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Williams,

Freedom of Information Act 2000- (Our Reference: FOI1170)

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request of 14 March 2022.
Translink responds to your request as follows.

Response

 1. Please provide a full current list of all bus routes that cross the
border to and from the ROI.

 2. Please provide me the full fares (this should show all Single fares
and Return fares and all other fares that are sold onboard by the
driver) in both GBP and EUR for all bus routes that cross the border
to and from the ROI.

In order to provide the requested fare information for the required
services, an extensive exercise would need to be employed to manually
extract and collate the required information. This manual exercise would
take a considerable amount of time and effort to complete.

As Translink’s fares are only programmed to record in GBP on our systems,
to then convert the required fare information into Euro would mean
manually converting each data set into Euro, further increasing this
already extensive exercise. Ultimately, Section 12 of the Act refers.

Section 12 of the Act allows a public authority to refuse requests for
information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the
‘appropriate limit’ which is set out in the regulations as £450 and
translates as 18 hours work for Translink staff, charged at £25 per hour.
A test exercise has identified that the cost/resources involved in
providing the information would far exceed the appropriate limit.

 3. Please provide me the full policy regarding using GBP in ROI and EUR
in NI on all cross border bus routes and details of all of the rules
and policy regarding this.

We do not have a specific policy regarding using GBP in the Republic of
Ireland and Euro in Northern Ireland on all cross border bus routes, as it
is common practice to accept both on all our services.

 4. Does accepting EUR on cross border routes add any additional costs to
you (such as any additional cash handling costs and currency exchange
costs) and if so how much extra per year does this cost you compared
to if you just handled GBP only.

There is no additional costs to Translink for handling Euros compared to
GBP.

Review Procedure

If you are not satisfied with this response you may request a review by
writing to the Translink General Counsel and Company Secretary, who has
overall responsibility for Freedom of Information and Data Protection
issues within this organisation. Correspondence should be addressed to the
above-mentioned at: Translink, 22 Great Victoria Street, Belfast BT2 7LX
or by email to [1][NITHCo / Translink request email].

If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to the Information Commissioner who will make an independent
judgement. The address of the Information Commissioner is: Wycliffe House,
Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. The address of the Information
Commissioner’s Office for Northern Ireland is: 3rd floor, 14 Cromac Place,
Gasworks, Belfast, BT7 2JB.

Yours sincerely,

The FOI/DPA Team

[2][email address]

Journeys and more at www.translink.co.uk

show quoted sections

Translink is a trading name used by any one or more of the companies under
the ultimate ownership of the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company
(NITHC). The Group comprises NITHC as parent company which owns Citybus
Limited (which also trades as “Metro”) (NI009039) Flexibus Limited
(NI006724) Ulsterbus Limited (NI006725), Translink (NI) Limited (NI006673)
and NIR Networks Limited (NI017638) - each of which is registered in
Northern Ireland and has its registered office at 22 Great Victoria
Street, Belfast BT2 7LX; Northern Ireland Railways Company Limited
(NI006929) which is registered in Northern Ireland and has its registered
office at 22 Great Victoria Street, Belfast BT2 7LX; and NIR Operations
Limited (NI021091) which is registered in Northern Ireland and has its
registered office at Lanyon Place Station, 47 East Bridge Street, Belfast
BT1 3NR.

References

Visible links
1. mailto:[NITHCo / Translink request email]
2. mailto:[email address]