Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The Chairman may be a few years ahead of the game there. Mr. Ennis said that he had a document that was, in his words: "explosive" and a "game changer". Mr. Ennis said it was a 2009 document prepared by CIÉ management that basically outlined in advance what we have seen happening over the past ten years - the fall off in CIÉ management making the contributions necessary to the CIÉ workers' pension fund. Mr. Ennis also said that the document expressed a fear that this could provoke industrial action. If one was on the board of CIÉ or another top position in CIÉ management, the worst nightmare would be industrial action. According to Mr. Ennis, this was not the worst nightmare of the senior people within CIÉ.

The document, which claims they had a greater fear, reads as follows:

However, the bigger problem may come from a referral of the issues to the Law Courts. If that is done the rule covering the Board's contributions will be examined. In addition, the Board's intentions and commitments given will emerge as part of Discovery. The Minister of the day signed the Order giving effect to the terms of the Statutory Instruments (SIs). The Department of Transport and the Department of Finance were fully aware of the terms of the SIs including the mechanism triggering a review of contributions.

If that is correct then it means senior people in CIÉ feared the legal implications of the actions that were taken, and I think that is explosive and is a game changer.

Earlier, Mr. Gill was asked to confirm, by simply saying "Yes" or "No", whether the document was produced by CIÉ. Fortunately, in my younger days I learned the skill of shorthand so I recorded what he said, word for word, which I shall read to the committee as it is very significant. He said, "I am not in a position to say whether that is a complete document. It may well be an extract from a document." He has not denied it is a CIÉ document. Any reasonable person who listened to what he said would say that is as close as one can possibly get to an admission that the document we are discussing is, at the very least, part of a CIÉ document. I think that situation is explosive and many questions flow from it. Were the contents of the document made known to the Minister at the time? Were the contents of the document made known to subsequent Ministers for transport? If so, did they keep that information from their Cabinet colleagues? The implications of this are quite serious and significant.

I started by talking about the recent weather warnings. Last week, I managed to travel from here to my home in Cork. I would not have been able to do so if it was not for the work of the people who wear orange jackets. I mean the men and women who were on duty and went out in bad weather to ensure that tracks were cleared and safe. I know well how difficult and stressful it is to drive a bus in a big city for decades. As a committee, we need to seriously consider the fact that more than 16,000 people have done such jobs and fulfilled their end of the bargain but some of them are not entitled to the State pension. The future and the entitlements of those men and women are at stake here so this is a very serious issue and serious business. I want us to nail this matter down at the end of this meeting. I formally propose that the committee support the call for CIÉ to pay for independent legal advice to be given to the unions that represent staff members. The request is modest and reasonable in the light of what has happened and what is at stake. The committee should unanimously endorse the call.