Full text of Joyce's resignation letter

The following is the full text of Mr Joyce's letter of resignation to the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke:

6th March, 2000

Dear Minister, My attention has been drawn to an article in The Irish Times of Friday March 3rd in which it was suggested that I was opposed to the Luas project. Correspondence between yourself and myself was cited as evidence of this.

This is an inaccurate and mischievous interpretation of the letter that was written. I did write to you to inform you of the prospect of the project reaching four to five times the amount originally envisaged (up to £1 billion perhaps). You will know that I did this, as stated in my letter, so that you and your cabinet colleagues would know the up-to-date position before large scale irrevocable commitments were made for capital equipment. It was intended that it would provide the Government with the opportunity to carry out a strategic review on a project that was potentially going to absorb up to 50 per cent of all available capital resources for national public transport in return for carrying less than 10 per cent of peak hour passengers into central Dublin. Given that this was a project initiated by the Department of Public Enterprise, I felt that it was appropriate to provide you with the opportunity to review the project. It would be normal in the private sector to carry out such a review on any project that escalated so dramatically, in order to establish whether the original objectives could be achieved in some other way. I presume that the Government availed of this opportunity at the time.

The Irish Times article also inferred that Luas would be operated other than by CIE and that my opposition to Luas was due to a fear of competition. I have not been informed that Luas will be operated by some other organisation and feel that it was inappropriate for the board and I to read of such matters in the public press. Indeed this has been a recurring problem where the media and the rumour machine in CIE has been fed key information before the chairman and the board. For the record, I believe strongly in competition and the root-and-branch reform of public transport will not be achieved without it.

I made a very comprehensive statement to the Chartered Institute of Public Transport on the future of public transport in Ireland in November 1998. The paper outlined a number of items necessary to bring about a revitalisation of public transport in Ireland with a specific emphasis on handing back the management of the CIE companies to the managers within them.

Key issues addressed included public service contracts, freedom on farebox changes and freedom from the involvement of the Department, the Minister and the Government in industrial relations matters - all of these are in the gift of the government yet remain an elusive pipedream. Sub-strata involvement in industrial relations matters by third parties (other than the LRC and the Labour Court), completely undermines the management in the respective companies and leaves them defenceless against any form of industrial action. The confusion caused by such intervention is a recipe for continuous conflict and incremental demands from the trade unions - the NBRU claim in Dublin Bus is a case in point.

There are well-defined lines of demarcation in the plc sector, outlining the roles played by shareholder, board and executive. I believe the public sector and CIE in particular would benefit greatly from adopting the same definitions. I would be confident that CIE could deliver the public transport service expected in Ireland in the new millennium if given the autonomy referred to above and outlined in detail in my paper of November 1998.

However, you and I have fundamentally differing views on this and are unlikely to agree in the foreseeable future. Accordingly, with immediate effect, I hereby resign as chairman and as a board member of CIE.

Yours faithfully,

Brian A. Joyce