Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I rise today in support of the Labour Party motion and endorse the comments made by Senator Nash. I commend his sterling work and achievements in recent years regarding workers' rights.

I have visited the Dublin Bus drivers' picket line twice in recent months at the Clontarf depot. It is clear from my discussions with them that they want a number of things. Their pay claim has been well aired, but it is clear to everyone that a mechanism must first be found to hold discussions around the table. Thankfully, there have been movements in this regard recently. Second, the future security of the company and the Government's relationship with the company must clarified. In this context, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport has been found lacking in using any imagination to help resolve the dispute. In the motion, we are calling for what the Minister should have been working on for the past four months. It took him more than four months just to sit down with Dublin Bus management, despite the fact that the strike was known to be coming down the tracks.

The Minister is a fast learner but, possibly a little like Donald Trump, he is learning that mouthing off is not an option when one has responsibility. One cannot leak a titbit of information to a former colleague in a national newspaper to garner some positive coverage in future. One cannot talk up a showdown at the O.K. Corral only to pick up one's dignity on the way out. One cannot send a tweet along the lines of, "Shellshock here at the Stepaside bus stop." The Independent Alliance must realise that being in government means one has to do something.

Perhaps this is the perfect storm for the Minister, as two of the forces that he hates most in life - trade unions and semi-States - form two sides of his Bermuda Triangle. This is the Minister who previously called trade unions the "arch-insiders of the Celtic Tiger", "big, bearded bosses at SIPTU" and the "ayatollahs of social partnership". He has described pay claims as "Liberty Hall's latest smash-and-grab raid on the Exchequer" and, colourfully, the "social partners had their snouts buried firmly in the national trough". This what he has said of CIE: "CIE has in recent years been exposed as a swamp of waste and skulduggery"; "Quangos like CIE and its three subsidiaries - Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann and larnród Éireann - are in dire need of efficiencies. There is plenty of fat hidden in the darker corners of these bloated bodies"; and "There is 'something of the dark' about CIE. Or at least a very thick fog embracing the murky company."

The Labour Party believes it is time for Fine Gael and the Independent Alliance to come clean. What is their vision for public transport? As a Deputy and Minister of State in the previous Government, I know that if the Labour Party had not stood up and entered into government, Dublin Bus would have been privatised and the Minister, Deputy Ross, would probably have been one of the loudest cheerleaders. The current Government should set out its vision. As Senator Nash outlined, we can adopt an industrial relations model from other northern European countries. We want the Government to set out its vision for the re-instatement over the coming years of the pre-crash subvention to Dublin Bus.

I commend the motion to the House.