Mr. Dermot O'Leary:

On behalf of the National Bus and Rail Union, I thank members of the committee for this opportunity to speak on behalf of transport workers and the communities they serve. It is they along with fellow ordinary decent workers who keep the wheels of the economy turning.

As the foremost front-line trade union in CIE with the largest membership across the public bus transport sector we make no apologies about having prosecuted a dispute at Dublin Bus in furtherance of a long overdue and well deserved pay rise after eight years of austerity. We now find ourselves facing into a doomsday scenario that Bus Éireann may attempt to impose unilateral changes to terms and conditions of its own staff, a situation which has been brought to bear by a policy driven at Department level and implemented, it would appear, with zest by the NTA.

This situation if allowed to develop unchecked will inevitably lead to industrial action, potentially across the public transport sector. The notion that unionised workers in the CIE group of companies would stand idly by and allow one of those companies to ride roughshod over fellow workers' terms and conditions is simply untenable. Those politicians who are minded to, as it were, mind their business or wash their hands of the problems at Bus Éireann would be well advised to think again. Rural Ireland has a habit of making the dog bark; it is called election time.

As the recession hit and revenue declined due to falling passenger numbers the three CIE companies engaged in impactful rationalisation plans which streamlined services, eliminated some terms and conditions and subjected staff to pay cuts. In the case of Dublin Bus it is worth noting that the 2015 subvention level should have been €60 million but €2 million was deducted because the NTA deemed that profits made from public service obligation business were unreasonable. The formula used by the NTA to calculate reasonable profit is an anachronism in the modern financial world in that the NTA uses return on equity and not turnover as is common practice. The more salient point here is that there would have been no unreasonable profit if workers were not enduring pay cuts at the time.

As members may be aware, the previous administration initiated the tender process to privatise 10% of Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann. The tender documents which surfaced this summer have a criterion of 65% cost. The only variable in bus transport is labour costs. The NBRU had to resort to initiating a High Court challenge against the previous Minister and the Department as a vital component of our anti-privatisation campaign in 2015. With the support of trade union colleagues we were relatively successful in our challenge to this anti-worker policy by having the principle of social clauses, namely an REA and SEO, agreed as part of the LRC-brokered settlement proposals.

We await publication of the legislative changes promised by Government in response to flaws in the current Act which the NBRU highlighted. However, it appears that those in Government are determined to pursue a policy which will inevitably lead to conflict. The trouble at Bus Éireann's Expressway can be directly linked to the Department-led and NTA-implemented policy of issuing and amending licences in the commercial bus market.

The NTA will, of course, contend that the customer has more choice and greater options. However, it will not admit that it has increased seat capacity on the Dublin-Limerick route by 111%, the Dublin-Cork route by 128% and the Dublin-Waterford route by 55%. Oversupply of seat availability does not equate to market demand. Saturating the market to unsustainable levels with a plethora of operators is not a visionary transport policy; all it achieves is the eventual demise of some of those operators, ending up with either a monopoly or at best a duopoly.

I earlier mentioned barking dogs. Rural Ireland can be unforgiving when it comes removing or threatening its vital social and economic service providers - rural post offices, bank and Garda station closures being a case in point. Here is another stark reality. Under pressure from this oversupply in capacity and in order to attempt to compete, Bus Éireann has now come stopped serving 200 towns and villages. The NTA is now placing an extra burden on the taxpayer by introducing additional PSO services into some of these areas. The most recent example of this is an €880,000 contract to M&A Coaches in June this year to areas once served by Bus Éireann.

The NTA, aside from being the authority is also the transport regulator. This is a function that is not being carried out regarding commercial bus licences. According to the 2009 Act, the NTA has the following obligation when awarding commercial licences:

10.- (1) In considering an application for the grant of a licence the Authority, having regard to the general objectives established under section 10 of the Act of 2008-

(a) shall take account of the demand or potential demand that exists for the public bus passenger services to which the application refers having regard to the needs of consumers and any existing public bus passenger services on or in the vicinity of the route to be served by the proposed public bus passenger services, and

I will skip the next section, if members do not mind.

For years Bus Éireann has cross-subsidised the underfunded PSO services with profits from its commercial operation by more than €40 million. I have provided members with a table outlining that in detail. However, this option is now longer available to Bus Éireann because of the non-regulation of the commercial bus market. As a result the transport network built up by decades of hard work is fragmenting before our eyes leaving the less densely populated portions of rural Ireland without public transport. The subvention levels at Bus Éireann have decreased from €49.4 million in 2009 to €33 in 2015. I will skip the section about Irish Rail; members may ask me questions about it if they want.

Yet another myth that needs to be challenged is the notion often peddled by the privateers that Transdev, as a private company, is a shining example of how a public transport system can be operated. Here are some startling facts. Transdev is actually owned by the Deposits and Consignment Fund, the French equivalent of our NTMA.

Transdev Ireland Limited, a holding company, returns a dividend to the French state every year paid for by the Irish taxpayer. Interestingly, the previous CEO of the NTA, Mr. Gerry Murphy, told the Oireachtas transport committee in January 2013 that public transport was underfunded.