A whirlwind of industrial conflict has hit Coras Iompar Eireann, as Dublin is deprived of its bus service and tens of thousands of rail travellers are left stranded by a separate outbreak of unofficial action by Iarnrod Eireann line-inspection workers. The sheer indifference of yesterday's action will have lost sympathy for the rail strikers, as so many people were suddenly stranded or otherwise inconvenienced. They will also have to reckon with a High Court injunction which could have a crippling financial effect on their union. But this eruption also raises profound questions about the management of CIE and the Government's overall transport policy.
CIE management has had plenty of time to foresee the dispute in Dublin Bus with drivers represented by the National Bus and Rail Union. The union's pay claim for an unconditional 20 per cent increase proved impossible to reconcile with demands for self-financing productivity concessions made by the company, as final decisions were made about the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
The union makes a strong case that its members' basic wage is too low and that their reliance on overtime earnings is inhumane. However they will have to show some flexibility in negotiating higher pay levels. They have become the scapegoats for deeper policy failings arising from quite unsatisfactory arrangements for operating, subsidising and governing this major service in a notoriously congested city. Unless there is a decisive move to settle the dispute, it is clearly only a matter of time before it escalates into an all-out strike with support across all the unions concerned, given the militant feelings on display yesterday.
In the Dail, the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, yesterday urged both parties to examine each other's proposals sympathetically in resumed negotiations and said the State's industrial relations machinery is fully available. She condemned the unofficial action by the rail workers over the use of outside contractors, pointing out that it was taken before a ballot on the recent Labour Court proposals. The Minister also attacked the former chairman of CIE, Mr Brian Joyce, who resigned earlier this month in protest against ministerial interference in the company's affairs, unfairly implying that he was responsible for the build-up of tension which has led to this strike. She pointedly rejected opposition calls for further ministerial involvement in the dispute.
CIE is thereby put in a near-impossible position. Dublin Bus has been starved of finance by successive governments. This means it cannot provide the decent service increasingly demanded by the. In most other European capitals, people are willing to subsidise public transport systems and have a role on governing them at city level - quite unlike Dublin and other cities in this State. CIE has not had the autonomy to set fares and restructure its operations.
Plans are being considered by the Government to separate the company's bus and train companies and possibly to allow private competition for each of them. These deserve the most careful examination in the light of the National Development Plan which allocates 2.3 billion to transport. But the management and resolution of this industrial relations crisis is the most urgent task facing CIE - and the Minister. On that will hang public confidence in their ability to tackle the longer term crisis of resources and governance facing Ireland's transport policy.