Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is not that long ago that the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, knocked on my mother's door, as he does at every election, looking for the vote. He should be warned that he is knocking on the door of a bus worker's family, and I think he will be run out of it in future, given his role as the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport.

In the not-so-far-off past the Minister railed against the establishment of quangos and those who avoid their ministerial responsibility. Ironically, he is now using a quango, the National Transport Authority, NTA, to avoid his own responsibility. He claims repeatedly that this is an industrial relations issue and not anything to do with him.

I argue this is a manufactured crisis in Bus Éireann. It was manufactured by successive Governments, which cut subvention from 2009 until last year and last year's increase does not wipe away the consequences of the systemic underfunding over the years and decades prior to that. The crisis is manufactured also by the ideology of the National Transport Authority and its insistence on the free market dogma of competition and issuing licences to private operators on a vast scale. Not only has it effectively flooded the capacity on key intercity routes, it continues to harbour plans for lunatic tendering competitions for all the public service obligation routes.

We should be clear that the crisis in Bus Éireann has nothing to do with improving public transport or getting people out of their cars. The opposite is the case. It is ideology masquerading as economics and market competition to facilitate private operators who make vast profits and who are driving down the rates of pay and conditions of its workers, as well as driving down the right of all workers to expect decent conditions.

Farcically, as the National Transport Authority and the Government takes money from the State, the Government is taking money from Dublin Bus; it took €2 million from it last year.

I wish to spend the final two minutes commenting on the Fianna Fáil motion. In typical fashion, Fianna Fáil gives the appearance of saying one thing when it is actually saying another. It is using all the usual flurry of sympathy but signifying nothing. It is offering tea and sympathy to Bus Éireann workers but notes strongly that the European Union rules of subvention may inhibit dealing with the actual cause of the problem. I note how readily the soldiers of destiny will ignore European Union subvention rules if they impinge, for example, on the taxes of the multinational corporations and their affairs but how obedient they can be to Europe when the issues of workers' rights and public services are affected. They are silent on the impact and the role of the National Transport Authority, but that is hardly surprising. After all, it was they who invented the agency and gave it its remit, including one to do by stealth what they could not do openly, that is, achieve the effective privatisation of our public transport services.

I commend the workers in Bus Éireann for the stance they have taken so far. I reject the spin that this is a basket case of a company on the verge of collapse. It is a company that has been undermined deliberately by Government and, considering that Bus Éireann has seen a 10% growth in passenger revenues since 2010 and a 7% growth in passenger numbers since 2011, the workers are right to reject this so-called plan that will absolutely undermine their conditions. I encourage them to remain strong and not to entertain the manufactured crisis of this Government and the NTA, behind which is the Minister's hand and the wider apparatus of the State.

I encourage other transport workers, especially those in Dublin Bus and in Irish Rail, to support their fellow Bus Éireannworkers in this fight because what befalls them today could be visited on all workers in the transport industry tomorrow. If this Dáil motion and our amendment will not reverse the Minister's policy and that of the NTA, I believe action by workers and solidarity from all workers and trade unionists could reverse his policies and force him to cough up and speak up on their behalf.

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