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

To avert disaster, there should be increased funding of the free travel pass, not 41% and not next year after these tortuous negotiations end. That should be moved up the agenda as a matter of urgency as I said at the start. After five days, where is the urgency? Also, Bus Éireann should be compensated for having to go off the motorways to service towns and villages while competing with private operators. A way must be found to do that and where there is a will, there is a way. However, there is a lack of will here, which is the real issue. Rather than find €9 million or €10 million to avert the strike and the crisis, which is peanuts in the greater scheme of things, the Minister prefers to put at risk €59 million in payroll taxes from 2,500 Bus Éireann workers, hundreds of millions in redundancy payments and hundreds of millions in social welfare payments. He does so in order to make Bus Éireann a low-pay company and to facilitate his privatisation agenda.

The Minister will become the first sole shareholder in history to watch his company head towards insolvency and over a cliff, all the while proclaiming there is nothing he can do. Since Bus Éireann was established in 1987, we have had many Ministers for transport. We have had Jim Mitchell, Ray MacSharry, John Wilson, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Charlie McCreevy, Brian Cowen, Michael Lowry, John Burton, Alan Dukes, Mary O'Rourke, Martin Cullen, Noel Dempsey, Pat Carey, Leo Varadkar and Paschal Donohoe, with Seamus Brennan having served twice.

There are some proper tulips in that group, but none of them ever brought the national bus company to the brink of insolvency. It is happening on the watch of the current Minister, Deputy Ross. Where is the urgency?

I do not know if the Minister considers himself to be a gambler. Tesco gambled that the public would not support the Tesco workers if they went on strike, and have learned something in recent weeks. Business was down by 80% in the shops where pickets were placed. Business was down by 30% in other shops with no pickets. There is a mood among the public of sympathy for ordinary working people who have not had pay increases for years when they stand up for their rights. Bus drivers have not had any for eight years. These are men and women who drive ordinary people to work, into town, to the next village, and who live in their communities. There is a real danger that the Minister is misjudging the public mood here. Fine Gael put out the slogan coming up to the previous election, "Keep the recovery going". It got it completely wrong and misjudged the mood. If the Minister thinks the public will not be with the bus drivers and against him and his Government, I suspect that he is misjudging the public mood as well.