Bus cuts a matter for firm, says Dempsey

JOB LOSSES and service cuts at Dublin Bus are a matter for management and unions at the company and not the Government, Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey said last night.

Siptu says it will resist compulsory job cuts following yesterday’s announcement by the company that it intends to make 290 staff redundant and reduce its fleet by 120 buses.

Mr Dempsey told The Irish Timesthat the company had been given €313 million in subsidies and allowed a 10 per cent fare increase in 2009 and it was its responsibility to manage that money.

He said he could not run the company and it was up to Dublin Bus’s parent company CIÉ to manage its finances. “CIÉ can’t trade recklessly. They can’t ignore losses and expect the taxpayer to keep paying out.

“They have a certain budget and they have to live within that budget. It is a matter between the unions and management how they do that. Obviously any job losses are regrettable, but my role in relation to this is to try to ensure that we have good public transport services and I believe we can have good ones.”

Mr Dempsey said he had commissioned a report on Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann’s services which he would publish within weeks.

However, Green Party TD and Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan said he believed the Dublin Bus move was not in line with Government thinking, while the party’s transport spokesman Ciarán Cuffe said the company had chosen the “easier option” of cutting jobs and services, instead of reforming the company.

Dublin Bus said it will lose €31 million this year, following a €10 million loss in 2008, unless it makes the cuts. Growing unemployment and the end of the building boom in newer residential areas had contributed to the losses, it said.

The company is also refusing to pay the 3.5 per cent national pay increase due in April, or the 2.5 per cent due next October.

A spokeswoman for the company said 200 of those who would be made redundant were temporary staff and the company would be seeking voluntary redundancies from permanent employees to make up the remaining 90 positions. Jobs would be cut across the company in executive, clerical, operations and maintenance.

The loss of 120 buses represents a reduction of 10 per cent of the bus fleet. The company would not say yesterday which routes would be affected, but the spokeswoman said one quarter of its routes would be “adjusted in some way”. In areas where a route is cut, an alternative will be available in the “immediate vicinity”, she said.

Siptu said it was advising its members that it will not accept compulsory redundancies, but would be willing to consider alternative proposals from Dublin Bus.

The union’s Dublin Bus branch president Tony Fallon said the announcement was contrary to Dublin Bus board’s stated position last month and queried whether the decision had been made without reference to the board.

“Siptu is surprised that the Dublin Bus board has now approved this drastic plan. Indeed up to December 2008 [the last board meeting] the Dublin Bus managing director was saying that 300 staff would go by natural wastage. What has changed in the last four weeks?”

The Green Party was yesterday criticised by the Opposition for allowing public transport cuts.

“Green Ministers now appear to have totally abandoned all of their core principles and policies in their desperation to stay in power with this discredited, incompetent and shambolic Government,” Labour transport spokesman Tommy Broughan said.

However, Green Party TDs were not supporting Dublin Bus cuts yesterday.

“Clearly there is a need for radical reform, but Dublin Bus has chosen the easier option of service and staff cuts without making the reforms to transform the company,” Mr Cuffe said.

If Dublin Bus improved its service by having real-time passenger information and ending the practice whereby buses arrive in “clumps” followed by gaps in service, more people would take buses with a resulting increase in revenue, Mr Cuffe said.