Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I again refer to Bus Éireann, an issue I have to raise. Who uses the public bus service? If we think about it, it is used by old people, young people, those who are sick, those living in rural towns and those on low incomes who do not have private transport. They are facing the prospect of losing key parts of the service. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, who must be vying for the title of the worst Minister with responsibility for transport in the history of the State, continues to insist that he will not intervene. However, hard-pressed Bus Éireann workers who have been the victims of the hard-right ideology of competition at all costs are facing the loss of their jobs, while we are facing the potential loss of the public bus service provided by the company. I am calling on the Minister to come to the House, although I know that he will not do so, and on our colleagues in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil who have the power to do so to insist that he engage with the trade unions, with which he is refusing to engage. They have a simple request - that all of the key stakeholders, the National Transport Authority, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Bus Éireann management and the unions, sit down together to work out how we can fix the company. Unbelievably, the Minister is still insisting that it has nothing to do with him, that it is purely an industrial relations matter, even though everyone in this Chamber knows that is not the case. For the sake of all of the people I have mentioned who are facing the hardship of industrial strife and the potential loss of services, I call on those with power in this Chamber, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Members, to insist that the Minister get up off his behind and do something.