160,000 passengers face disruption by rail stoppages

With no sign of a last-minute intervention, 48 hours of strikes on the country’s railways affecting up to 160,000 passengers will begin tomorrow morning.

Businesses in Dublin city centre warned last night traders in the capital face daily revenue losses of €25m to €30m in the Irish Rail pay dispute.

DublinTown (formerly Dublin City BID) which represents 2,500 businesses in the city centre, yesterday appealed to all parties to use the State’s dispute resolution infrastructure to find a way through the current impasse and avert industrial action.

Tens of thousands of GAA fans from Kerry and Mayo heading to Croke Park for tomorrow’s All-Ireland senior football championship semi-finals will also suffer.

Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe once again called yesterday for the action by members of Siptu and the National Bus and Rail Union to be cancelled pointing out that it would make the “very difficult” financial situation at Irish Rail even worse.

At the heart of the dispute is plans by the company to implement a cost-savings plan from tomorrow which will see temporary pay cuts ranging from 1.7% for staff earning up to €56,000, and up to 6.1% for those earning more than €100,000. The cuts, recommended by the Labour Court, are to last for 28 months.

Both Siptu and NBRU have questioned the rationale for the imposition of cuts on their members.

NBRU general secretary Dermot O’Leary yesterday said: “The subsidy levels [from the Government] at Irish Rail have fallen from €174m in 2009 to €117m this year which is 1998 levels. Expecting a service to be run on those levels of subsidy is just not tenable.”

Paul Cullen, Siptu organiser at Irish Rail, said his members had engaged with the company since 2010 in relation to cost containment measures, agreeing to a head count reduction of 2,000 and a cut of €36m in payroll costs. He said in 2012 the staff entered an agreement with management which was supposed to last until 2016.

“Our members do not believe that the cuts they are being asked to take will be the last they will be expected to endure,” he said.

It is anticipated that Irish Rail will miss out on up to €500,000 in subvention from the National Transport Authority as well as the revenue drop as a result of the loss of ticket sales.

If the three further days of action planned for September 7 and 21 — the two days of the All-Ireland hurling and football finals — as well as September 8, go ahead, the total loss of subvention is expected to be in the region of €1.2m.

Barry Kenny of Irish Rail pointed out the NTA has issued temporary licences to other operators, thus “handing our customers to other operators and widening the financial gap. [The action] is so counterproductive. It is going to cost us customers, widen the gap, and cause greater loss of earnings to employees engaging in the industrial action”.