Late night intervention on Monday by Mary O'Rourke to avert the country's first national strike since the early 1980s "has saved the country from a catastrophe", says Peter Bunting. "I think the only people who may have failed to appreciate the fact is CIE management."

Certainly the view in CIE is that Mr Bunting and the CIE unions generally have choreographed the dispute beautifully to delay still further the introduction of change. As one management source said yesterday: "It appears there was another script operating all the time."

He added: "It will be good to see how well the NBRU are if Stagecoach or

First Bus get 40 or 50 routes. One thing's for sure, those companies won't be interested in talking to the NBRU, or any other union." With losses of over

£56 million reported by CIE for last year - and competition imminent -

increasingly anxious managers see further delays in negotiating viability plans as a commercial death warrant.

The union set up by Tom Darby 30 years ago is still the bugbear of Ireland's national transport company and Peter Bunting is perceived by some managers as an even bigger obstacle to change than his predecessor. Naturally, it's a judgment he rejects.

Although much smaller than SIPTU, the NBRU represents the majority of drivers, who are the key group in CIE. Drivers are traditionally militant and Mr

Bunting says that management has made it difficult to argue the necessity of change.

"I accept fully we have to negotiate a viability plan," says Mr Bunting, though he queries the extent of the company's real losses. "The major thing, from my point of view, is to protect members' earnings.

"There would be a hell of a lot more consent to change if savings weren't targeted so much on wages. That's what's frightened everybody."

Drivers in CIE can earn good money, but half of the £25,000 a year that some of them achieve is due to overtime. Under the viability plan for Bus

Eireann cuts ranging from £80 a week to over £200 a week are being sought. The company has offered to bring basic rates up from £180

a week to about £240, and points out that the going rate among the non-

unionised private operators for a driver is about £200 a week.

The unions believe the company must move a lot nearer to the average earnings of £350 a week before there is a realistic prospect of negotiating a serious package. Peter Bunting says that a significant improvement on £

240 "would be a confidence booster to the process". He believes that the narrow escape from a national strike will bring about "a more pragmatic approach" from management.

He also criticises the number of layers in CIE management. "The more managers you have, the longer it takes for the bad news to reach the top." He says that the unions have not had a single meeting with CIE's head of human resources, Mr

Tony Bergin, this year. In his 25 years working in CIE or representing workers there, Peter Bunting says that the advent of a new chief executive, or managing director to a subsidiary company has almost invariably been followed by serious disputes. "I think some people in CIE management manufacture disputes for their own agendas." "They have to stop beating people over the heads with target dates and negotiate," he says.

"The last thing any of us need is a strike. I have moved my union away from that culture. I've spent the last five years running around Ireland putting out disputes. I keep telling my members, `My main priority is to keep you in a job -

not keep you outside the gate'.

"We have reached a stage where mutual trust and a sharing of responsibility is essential. No matter how good a manager thinks he is, when you get to the point of production he loses all control.

"Whether it's a computer assembly line or a bus, the worker is managing himself, or herself. He can be a malingerer, or he can sabotage the product if he has a mind to. The corollary of good performance is that a worker is well rewarded and is consulted."

The long hours of overtime necessary to earn a decent wage is a contributory factor to the antagonism many CIE drivers have to proposals for change. "Most of my members have a reasonable living standard, but their quality of life is poor," Mr Bunting points out. "They leave home in the morning, long before the kids go to school and come home when the kids are in bed."

He sees the advent of a new Government as an opportunity and the NBRU has historically worked well with Fianna Fail. The union is not affiliated to the

Irish Congress of Trade Unions or the Labour Party.

The company has a potential political handicap. Its chief executive Mr

Michael McDonnell was appointed by the last government. However, governments generally have fought shy of national transport strikes and, when one threatened late last year over the company's refusal to pay a 2.5 per cent pay award, Ms

O'Rourke's predecessor Mr Michael Lowry also intervened over the head of management to ensure the dispute was resolved without a strike.

Peter Bunting became a bus driver by chance. Born in west Belfast 46 years ago, he comes from a radical republican and socialist background. His father was a Belfast city alderman for the Independent Labour Party in the 1950s and 1960s.

His mother was a leading member of the National Union of Public Employees.

Caught up in the civil rights movement and protest politics of the late

1960s, Mr Bunting came south in 1970. By 1972 he had joined CIE as a bus conductor. Although he had many friends in the Irish Transport and General

Workers Union, he decided to join the NBRU "because it was the majority union on the buses and its approach appealed to me".

By 1975 he had become the conductors' representative in Dublin Bus and a branch secretary in 1976. By 1978 he was on the national executive. He first made a name for himself as one of the leaders of the five-day strike in 1979

which saw bus workers win a pay rise of £10.50p a week.