Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the Minister's earlier response to Deputy Dooley's priority question on this subject. Had the Minister's Government had a majority, we would be heading down a serious route of privatisation, much further then we are going. The Minister has made it very clear that he and his party are in favour of privatisation of the bus services. The incremental privatisation has already started. We are now talking about a further 10% on top of the privatisation that has already taken place across the services.

I do not know what the Minister's Labour Party colleagues are doing to stop this, but it is clear that many of these private companies will cherry-pick the services they will provide. They have already done so with some services to parts of the country. Cherry-picking will take place and we will not get a better service. I do not accept for a minute that anybody can believe we will get a better bus service if services are privatised.

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