Just what is Martin Cullen up to ?

He takes on board Matthew Ryan's brights idea of extending the Irish Senior Citizens Free Travel Scheme to UK visitors of a similar vintage- and then turns it into a bureaucratic stew. The Budget announcement that Failte Ireland and Irish Rail are to produce some form of discount scheme for UK seniors smacks of complication and confusion. What was wrong with merely inviting these most welcome and high spending visitors to show simple photo ID with their age as a means of qualifying for free public transport ?. Such a scheme would be simplicity itself to operate and if it included Bus Eireann and private bus servces it would enable UK seniors to visit places not served by the rail network. Aircoach already carries Irish OAPs free on its services and gets paid by simply recording their pass numbers. Something similar could surely apply in the case of our UK visitors.