Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will not say much about the Dublin Bus dispute except briefly to congratulate the workers on achieving the 3% offer. However, the Minister's failure to increase the State subvention has complicated the ballot because workers are asking where the money to fund the claim will come from. There is a concern that if it is not funded from the State, workers will be made to pay through the back door. Ministers felt last week that the Garda pay claim was wrapped up, but the Garda Representative Association, GRA, rejected the proposals, and it would be a mistake on the part of Ministers to feel that the Dublin Bus issue is wrapped up now. A similar result in that ballot cannot be ruled out.

Bus Éireann management plans to separate out the Expressway operation and slash the wages and conditions of the workforce. The Minister has denied that he gave the green light for this so this morning, at this committee, he has an opportunity. The question is this: is he prepared to say that Bus Éireann management's actions are a real upping of the ante in the race to the bottom, that they are provocative and that he dissociates himself entirely from them? The model in Bus Éireann has clearly failed. The issuing of new licences and the amending of existing licences have damaged Expressway to the point of it being unsustainable. The commercial bus market has reached saturation point in respect of the number of operators and routes and is now in need of urgent review. I ask his opinion on that. I also ask him to comment on the fact that private operators can regularly breach the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 with little or no punishment, yet State operators must stringently abide by it.

The Minister said in his introductory remarks that in recent years there has been great improvement in public transport. Many people listening to this would shake their heads in wonder at that statement. The State subvention has been slashed across the board year after year for eight or nine years now. I will not go into all the facts and figures, but the 2007 State subvention to Iarnród Éireann was €195 million; last year it was €98 million - cut in half. For Dublin Bus, the subvention fell from €86 million to €58 million between 2008 and 2015 - cut by a third. For Bus Éireann, the subvention fell from €49 million to €34 million - cut by 30%. Public transport is at a breaking point. Iarnród Éireann does not have enough to maintain current services or rolling stock, let alone to expand operations.

The Minister correctly said in his opening statement that public transport is vital to combat congestion and assist the environment and that what is needed is a vision of improved public transport services. However, given those stats, that cannot be done by tweaking; it needs a massive increase in the State subvention. If we say that health and education are public services and we fund them accordingly, we must do so as well with public transport, very much the poor relation at the moment. At least €170 million would be needed simply to bring Dublin's bus services up to the European average. Is the Minister prepared to fight for increases of that kind? Does he have sufficient vision to aim that high?

I want to ask in particular about a cut in the State subvention regarding payments from the Department of Social Protection to CIE to cover the free travel scheme. I understand that these transfers, incredibly, are based on a passenger survey carried out in 1973. I also understand that payments have been frozen since 2011. In 2011, there was a transfer of €76 million for the free travel scheme, but passenger numbers that year were 726,000. In 2015, they were 842,000. That is an increase of 16%, but there has not been a 16% increase in the payments, which indicates that, to a greater or lesser extent because it is not exact, CIE is down in the region of 16%. That is a further €12 million slashed from the budgets. That should be addressed, and I ask the Minister for his comments on that.