To be fair to the Dept (although they are probarbly not deserving of fairness) the current licence objections process came about after years of the practice of "consulting" C.I.E on all new bus service licence applicitions , and then C.I.E. (who at that time did'nt require route licences) would jump in and begin operating the service thereby either removing the need to grant said licence to the private operator or make the route un-viable as a commercial interest
Although it is interesting to see C.I.E. group companies moaning and groaning at having to jump through the same hoops they insisted everyone but them had to jump through to get licences , and they are now getting a chance to see how un-realistic these hoops (that they helped to devise) actually are (obviously they did'nt realise at the time that someday they too would be forced through the hoops) , but having 100 publically funded buses sitting idle in depots after a year is scandelous to say the least , but the high number of objections to new services at present might just be private interests taking revenge for years of sharp practices from C.I.E. and may fall away after some time , hopefully , if not , there will be some interesting times ahead