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

Once again, the Minister has completely ignored my question. Does he believe that this process of tendering will deliver public transport in a way that will take cars off the road and that will not drive wages and conditions of workers to the very bottom of a pit? The Minister has refused to answer this. The reality is that the conditions and rosters under which workers have been forced to live are driving down their lives and working conditions so badly that many of the workers are leaving. There are not enough buses and not enough workers. Competition does not deliver good public services. This is not Bríd Smith saying this. This is not rocket science. If we want good public services, they must be delivered with proper funding. The Minister talks and brags about the public service obligation, PSO, increases, over recent years. I remind the Minister that the PSO for Bus Éireann is still about €9 million below what it was when the recession hit in 2009. It has never been restored.

I attended a conference recently on climate change. Ireland is appallingly bad at dealing with it. One of the key issues is that Ireland is not able to deliver decent public transport. In not doing so, we are breaching all of our commitments to dealing with climate change and our commitments to dealing with workers.

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