Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are now into the sixth day without Bus Éireann services throughout the country. People are angry about the loss of services. The workers are very angry about the race to the bottom to a low wage and low cost public transport model with a draconian reduction in their overall take-home income. People in the regions have no access to public transport. Towns that are already in deep trouble are dying on their feet, so to speak, without this connectivity. Students are having huge issues in getting to universities, institutes of technology and various colleges. There are sick people who are having great difficulty in making their hospital appointments. Notwithstanding that, we still have inertia and paralysis in the reaction of the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, and of the Government to this. There are 110,000 regular passengers who are being discommoded, and 2,500 workers who are in a very deeply anxious and worrying state.

I put it if this was Dublin Bus or if it was affecting the capital city, the issue would have been resolved much earlier. It is interesting that the Luas dispute was resolved, the Dublin Bus dispute was resolved and the Garda pay issue was resolved. The Minister was involved in that and it broke the Lansdowne Road agreement. However, this situation cannot get resolved. Not only is it not getting resolved, no attempt is being made, not even behind the scenes, to try to sort this out. One senses a hidden agenda that is determined to undermine the very concept of a public transport company. I have a real, deep sense of that. It is a view that accords with the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport's own personal ideology and philosophy. It is something I reject and do not support it in any shape of or form because we need a public transport company. That is a policy position.

It is important to point out that there were options in advance of this dispute taking place. We pointed out the room for manoeuvre regarding the free travel issue and whether Bus Éireann was getting enough funds for that. We have made the point about the public service obligation. The Minister also has the additional facility of cross-subsidisation from reasonable profit, which the EU obliges and facilitates the companies to engage in. Dublin Bus did extraordinarily well out of that facility last year. Bus Éireann got about €400,000 from that. The point is that policy-wise there were opportunities to create the conditions to facilitate a resolution of the situation. There was precedent in 2013 when the then Government facilitated intervention of two facilitators to enable actions to be taken to get it back into the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. This idea that we will not get involved at all does not hold water in respect of precedents. I put it to the Minister that the inertia is not good enough and people are being discommoded unreasonably.

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