Today's strike at Bus Eireann has been called off following the intervention of the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke. The
Minister called on the company last night to defer introducing the controversial new minibus routes in Cork, Galway, Limerick and
Waterford this morning and, in response, the unions agreed to cancel their strike plans.
Ms O'Rourke's intervention came at 10 p.m., 30 minutes after talks between the two sides broke down at the Labour Relations Commission.
The talks ended when the unions rejected a management offer to defer the introduction of minibuses until August 12th.
In return for the deferral, the unions would have had to accept minibuses from that date, even if agreement on other outstanding issues in the company's £6 million cost-saving plan remained unresolved. The unions said that the proposal did not meet their requirement that the total package had to be agreed before any single element could be implemented.
Bus Eireann's operations manager, Mr Paul Kiely, said last night that the company would accede to Ms O'Rourke's request.
The general secretary of the National Bus and Rail Union, Mr Peter
Bunting, who has repeatedly called on the Minister to intervene, welcomed her action last night. It meant industrial action was now postponed pending further discussions with Ms O'Rourke. The SIPTU
regional secretary, Mr Jack Nash, said that his union would also defer to what he described as "the Minister's very sound decision".
If the strike had gone ahead, thousands of provincial commuters would have faced disruption to services. There was also a serious risk of the dispute spreading to Iarnrod Eireann and Dublin Bus by tomorrow.
Ms O'Rourke said last night that she would be raising the dispute at today's Cabinet meeting. She intended meeting both sides as quickly as possible.