Employees at Bus Éireann headquarters in Dublin protesting against decentralisation yesterday said they woke up one morning to find their jobs advertised on a Department of Transport website.
The protest at The Spire in O'Connell Street by members of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA) took the form of letting go 81 balloons, representing each job at the HQ.
The HQ's staff are due to be transferred to Mitchelstown, Co Cork, under the decentralisation programme.
The TSSA organiser, Mr Colm Jordan, said the Department wanted to decentralise 200 jobs in the HQ but there were only 81. None of those employees wanted to decentralise.
Bus Éireann staff were one of the most decentralised in the State with 85 per cent of its staff outside Dublin and 21 per cent in Cork, he said. Bus Éireann was a semi-State company and not part of the Civil Service.
Yesterday, employees said they did not want to go to Cork. Ms Lorraine Mason, who has worked for CIÉ and Bus Éireann for 26 years, said: "We woke up one morning and were told our jobs were on the net."
She said she had elderly parents who lived in Dublin and a 17-year-old about to go to college.
"What does the Minister want me to do, just leave him in a rented flat? I'm too committed to move anywhere. They are taking our jobs, our lives, our careers - how dare they," she said.
Ms Frances Gannon is a Dubliner who recently bought a house in Kildare. Her husband also works for Bus Éireann. The Government wanted to move them to a green-field site with no infrastructure, she said. "Politicians make these decisions based on numbers. They are not looking at the people or taking into consideration the human factor. I'm a person, not just a number," she added.
The couple had decided they did not want to move but did not know what would happen. She had worked for 30 years in CIÉ and for the last three years had worked in the HQ in a specialist job. She was doing further training at college for the job.
Ms Gannon said: "It is worrying. My job is on the net. What am I supposed to make of that?"
Mr Tommy Breen, chairman of the TSSA Irish committee, said the decision had been badly thought out and there had been no consultation.
The Government was talking about moving a commercial company in competition with private bus companies, he said.