Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I call on the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to intervene as a matter of urgency in the Bus Éireann dispute. Members of the various unions involved in this strike will protest outside the House later while the Minister addresses the Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport. He should not only address the committee; he should address the unions and the company. While acknowledging that the company is loss making in its present guise and that the workers have a right to strike to protect the rights they have earned over many decades, more than 100,000 people, mainly in rural Ireland, depend on bus services, which are a vital part of the infrastructure of rural Ireland, and they are the real victims of this strike. This is day six. How many more days are workers going to have to endure the picket line? How many days will ordinary commuters, who depend on the bus company to get to and from various locations throughout this island, have to wait because eventually this will have to be sorted? There are those who say the bus company is waiting until it is such a dire financial position that it has to go into examinership. If that is the motivation behind what the management are at, that is disgraceful and a stop needs to put to that immediately. I call on the Leader to use his good offices to impress on the Minister, who has an opinion on every Department except his own, to intervene in this dispute before it gets too desperate for the workers, the company and the more than 100,000 people who depend on bus services to go about their daily business.

Yesterday, Senator McDowell raised the issue of judicial appointments. The former Minister has a great opinion on this. I endorse everything he said in that regard. The Judiciary has served us well since the foundation of the State. It is a function of whichever Government is in power to appoint judges and there is a system in place to vet those who apply to become judges before the nominations are put before the Minister and the Cabinet for appointment. While the process should be left as it is, I would like the Leader to impress on the Minister for Justice and Equality the important point made by the director general of the Law Society. He said that since it became possible for solicitors, who comprise 80% of the practising legal profession, to become judges of the superior courts, less than 8% of appointments have gone to them. That needs to be addressed. Senator McDowell used the word "excellence". There is excellence among that 80% and they should be given credit for that.