A strike at CIE appears "almost inevitable" after the Department of Transport confirmed it had issued two licences to private bus operators earlier this month, a major transport union has warned
The National Bus and Rail Union (NBRU) said the department issued the licences on June 2nd, just six days before the minister was to provide CIE unions with a "definitive response" to their concerns about his plans for the group.
Earlier this week the NBRU postponed its participation in talks with the Department of Transport after the assurances it had sought were not made available at a meeting with officials.
The NBRU said that one of the major concerns of the unions is the way in which private operators are being allowed to "cherry pick" schedules on high-density routes at peak travel times.
A special meeting of the NBRU executive is due to take place on Saturday morning.
NBRU general secretary Mr Liam Tobin said the revelation that the minister had issued two new licences in the Dublin area "will have a very serious impact on our meeting".
"We already have creeping privatisation of Bus Eireann routes but relatively few licences have been issued in the Greater Dublin area. We have now learnt that new licences have been issued to run services from the city centre to City West Campus and from Sydney Parade DART station to City West Spar."
"These buses will be jam packed, but off-peak travellers will have to rely on Dublin Bus for transport. If this is not cherry picking I do not know what is.
"I am surprised at the minister's behaviour, although I suppose I should not be at this stage. We have negotiated in good faith on how to improve services in the best interests of our members and the travelling public only to find that the key asset of Bus Eireann and Dublin Bus, their routes, are being cynically sold out of the back door of the Department," Mr Tobin said.
He said the move by the Department of Transport was "privatisation by stealth" and had nothing to do with improving services in the long-term interest of commuters or on reaching a consensus on the best way forward for public transport.
"What makes the process all the more worrying is the manner in which routes are being handed out. There is no open or competitive tendering. Operators simply approach the Department and take their pick.
"In the circumstances our national executive will have few options when it meets on Saturday but, as we've said before, it looks as if Mr Brennan may get the long hot summer he has been yearning for since April 2003."
A spokesman for Mr Brennan said the Department of Transport was "surprised and disappointed", firstly that the NBRU had pulled out of talks and, secondly, that it was the general public who would suffer yet again in the event of strike action.
He said there had been five straight days of talks in May and, at the end of that process, the unions had made a proposal which had implications for industrial relations reaching far outside the Department of Transport. The unions had been told that the department needed time to respond. He said the department should certainly be in a position to respond before the end of this month.
On the issue of the two new bus licences, the spokesman said the minister was obliged by law to consider any application received and to process it within a specified timescale. This had been reinforced in recent High Court cases. The number of licences actually being issued was relatively small and most of those issued were, in fact, renewals, the spokesman added.