The Minister for Public Enterprise has promised to introduce competition into Dublin bus services and to ensure public transport is "properly funded".
Speaking on RTE radio's Morning Ireland programme yesterday, Ms O'Rourke did not rule out the possibility of the Government providing more money to help Dublin Bus resolve the current dispute, but repeated that pay rises for bus drivers should be funded through greater efficiency and productivity. The Dublin Chamber of Commerce urged Ms O'Rourke to put private buses on the roads as soon as possible.
However, Ms O'Rourke said it was not possible to grant licences to private operators in the short term. "There is an Act, the 1932 Act, and the Government decision is that it has to be reviewed. You can't review it overnight, you can't, despite the call by other people, put private buses on the streets in the morning. It has to be done with legislation and in proper shape, and that's the way we are going to go about it." Mr Ciaran Conlon, Dublin Chamber of Commerce campaigns manager, said the Minister should grant licences to private operators before the Act is reviewed in order to give commuters in Dublin some options if there is a strike next week and also in response to the "pent-up supply in the private sector to provide services". He said it was up to the Minister to interpret the Act positively in favour of the private operator.
Ms O'Rourke agreed the State had neglected and underfunded CIE for many years, adopting the attitude that CIE "will just about get along". She also agreed that the subsidy of CIE had gone down in percentage terms over the years. "A city the size of Dublin, indeed many of the cities in Ireland, demand, I think, a properly funded public transport system," she said.
Her vision for the future included "properly funded, properly run public transport", she said. In tandem, she said, there would be "decent competition" in Dublin's bus services.
Last November, she said, the Government had invited submissions on the reform of the 1932 legislation. Some 60 submissions had been received and Department of Public Enterprise officials were to hold discussions with trade unions and other groups on how that legislation was to be reformed. A meeting with trade union representatives scheduled for yesterday was cancelled as the trade unionists were involved in talks about the current dispute.
Ms O'Rourke said she had improved funding for public transport since she came into office over 2 1/2 years ago.
"When I came in, first there was a huge safety issue on the railways, which we're tackling with £350 million, and that was the very first thing I had to do. "There was not a DART carriage bought since 1984 . . . or new buses for a long number of years until we started last year."