23 May 2008

Dear Colleagues,

A brief round up of various events and news items this week…
 
There are two charity events coming up which we are happy to support.   The Emmerdale Extravaganza to raise money for Anthony Nolan Trust ‘Taking lives back from Leukemia’ takes place at the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, Cultra on Saturday 7th June 2008 and looks like a great day out.  Details are on the website of how you can take part yourself. 

We are also helping out with two fun days in Derry City and Ballymena for the Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children.  Primary school children will be hitching a free lift with us to these events on 23rd and 30th May.
 
This week we announced a £3.4million investment to add 20 new double deck buses to our Metro fleet - 7 of these are extra to the existing fleet and 13 replace older vehicles.  This will provide around 1000 extra seats for customers in Belfast each day and keep the success and growth of Metro going.  
 
Also in the news this week we had an ‘attack’ on our website.  No damage was done and no data was compromised.  Credit is due to our colleagues in IT and Marketing for identifying the problem quickly, taking prompt action and staying on top of the issue. 
 
But as a precaution we are taking the opportunity to complete a full review of the website’s security using outside experts and until we have the results of this review we have suspended all online sales.  Regrettably, the process will not be completed in time to continue with our current Enterprise online offer.  However, we will run a similar promotion this summer and hope that our customers will be able to avail of that offer.
 
While talking about the website, in March we introduced a tool called ‘Browsealoud’.   This ‘speaks’ website content aloud whilst highlighting the word as it is read and is free for web users.  As you can imagine this tool improves online accessibility for those with mild visual impairments and literacy difficulties.

Catherine Mason,

Group Chief Executive