The Minister for Transport is forging away with plans to split CIÉ but it could be far from a smooth ride as he battles to get the unions on side, writes Arthur Beesley.
It is said in transport circles that new governments are marked by a zeal to reform CIÉ, only to abandon such plans once the group's unions scupper the notion by striking.
This time round the Government wants to go the whole hog by breaking the group up altogether. It is a radical and sensitive plan, undertaken along with a commitment to open a quarter of the bus market in Dublin to competition.
Whether the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has the measure of the National Bus and Railworkers' Union (NBRU) and SIPTU remains to be seen. But Mr Brennan has been in Government before - in this same Department, indeed - and it must be assumed that he would not publicise his objectives if he did not believe they could be achieved.
For that, however, reaching any agreement with a traditionally militant workforce will demand considerable political skill and, most likely, some form of payback.
The CIÉ plan is just one of a number advanced last year by Mr Brennan, but he is expected to kickstart the process in the next fortnight by appointing a special implementation committee.
Trouble is already looming, however, in that the trade unions are not expected to be invited onto that committee.
If the plan gets off the ground, this group will play a crucial role.
The template for change is a long and heavily detailed report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which has been under consideration in Mr Brennan's Department since last August. Presented yesterday to the CIÉ board, the document contains a welter of administrative options for the break-up of the group, which is likely to take years to complete.
From the perspective of bus and rail passengers, there is much less detail on the development of a better service.
This would be the priority in a normal scenario, as the rail and bus services are the group's raison d'etre. However, the thinking in Government is guided more by the enormous increase in the group's State subvention and a desire to reduce it as the economy slows.
As PwC notes, the operating subvention has spiralled in the past five years, growing to €245 million in 2001 from €133 million in 1997. Capital grants increased to €428 million from €69 million in the same period, underlining the huge flow of State money into the group.
All this in return for a service that has improved only marginally, if at all, with frequent delays taking the gloss off new buses and rolling stock.
However, the Government has effectively given up on fixing CIÉ Group as an entity. Hence the PwC report contains numerous restructuring proposals in the centrally managed areas such as subvention, property, claims, debt and pensions.
The thrust of the plan is to clear the dead wood and provide greater commercial freedom to the three operating companies. Ironically, however, the plan also calls for the formation of a new group services company to provide a limited number of central services.
Always, in the background lies that difficult relationship with the unions. The NBRU in particular is already unhappy with separate plans to deregulate the transport market. The union argues that it had a commitment from Government that only new routes would be opened to competition.
That was in the time of the transport forum, set up under the Programme of Prosperity and Fairness. While the forum is still in existence, it is likely to be sidelined as Mr Brennan's implementation committee sets to work.
If the time has come for Mr Brennan and the unions to lock horns, passengers will be hoping that any industrial action can be avoided. A more distant hope is that the break-up of CIÉ and the arrival of competition will lead to an improvement in bus and rail services.
