Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

When we hear the Minister's response, which has failed to address either the questions we asked or, more importantly, the concerns driving the bus workers to go out on strike tomorrow, I have to say they are right and justified to proceed with that industrial action to force the Minister to back down. This is about the Minister's policy and not all these technicalities and legalities. It is about his policy and the obsession of Fine Gael in particular to privatise public services.

We need to be clear and the public needs to be clear that when those workers go out on strike against privatisation, they are acting in the interests of the entire public. As a result of privatisation there will not be a single extra bus route or bus journey on any of the routes that are outsourced. The only thing that will change is that in order to make money, those private contractors will have to cut the wages and conditions of workers or cut the services, or both. In the long run, services such as the ones I mentioned in outlying areas, of which our area will be particularly hard hit, will go because they will not been seen as profitable from the point of view of profit-hungry contractors.

We are saying the Minister should abandon the plan to dismantle the public transport system. It is wrong.

See this speech in context