Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I rise to again call on the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to make some effort to intervene in the Bus Éireann strike. Yesterday I went outside the gates of Leinster House with some of my colleagues and met some of the decent, hard working staff in Bus Éireann who are rightly concerned about their future employment status and the future of Bus Éireann. I cannot understand how the Leader's party can stand by a Government Minister who refuses to engage at any level with one of the most serious issues facing us today. We are faced with a situation where companies and local economies are affected, where some companies are paying privately to chauffeur their staff to and from work. This has an awful impact on Ireland as a place to do business. Especially with the triggering of Brexit yesterday, we need to sell ourselves as a place where a company can do their its with ease and not be hampered by basics such as a faulty transport system. We also have a situation where it has been reported that some private operators operating school runs are not being paid on time. This will have a cash flow implication for these companies and may put these routes in jeopardy. Having this type of impact on children's education, flowing from the Minister's inaction, is unacceptable.

With regard to the ongoing Garda controversy, we learned this morning that the Commissioner has apologised to the Policing Authority for failing to mention the breath testing audit, despite having met the Policing Authority six times over the past year. She also admitted that officers deliberately falsified driving statistics and she apologised in regard to the wrongful convictions. This has led to more questions that need to be answered.

The Commissioner also apologised for the scandals in the force over the last ten years. This is not enough. I call on the Minister to introduce a fast-track Patten-style reform as colleagues mentioned yesterday to immediately restore public confidence in the Garda Síochána and to assure those honest, hard working gardaí that they can have confidence in their job and in the organisation for which they work.

I commend Joanne O'Riordan and the 100 disability groups who are protesting outside the Dáil today to acknowledge the Government's failure to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.