Passengers face chaos after rail talks breakdown
At 9.30pm last night, there were reports the marathon talks on productivity measures had broken down meaning all intercity, commuter and Dart services due to depart between 6am-9am this morning — and several intercity services after that period — would not operate.
When this morning’s action goes ahead — and it is due to be repeated in two weeks — Irish Rail will face hundreds of thousands of euro in lost fares and State subvention this morning alone. It has already admitted it is losing “in excess of 1.5m per month”.
The row is over productivity. Driver unions the National Bus and Rail Union (NBRU) and Siptu want financial recognition for past productivity. Management said it is willing to engage on existing productivity measures. It said a proposal was on the table that would mean a 7.9% pay increase for drivers over three years. Unions described that as “manifestly untrue and designed to create a false and misleading impression among both the public and our members”.
Dermot O’Leary General Secretary said; "It is unfortunate that it took until the 11th Hour for the real company agenda to emerge, they continuously and quiet deliberately chose to ignore our members agenda in relation to past contributions, this coupled with their excessive expectations in relation to future productivity far exceeded their public position of attending at the WRC to do a deal to prevent disruption to services, all designed, we feel to provoke our members to the point where they now feel that they have no option but to engage in Industrial Action on Friday next"
Mr O’Leary went on to say: "On the back of two disputes within a year, preceeded, it should be noted, by over fourteen years of Industrial peace, it is long since past time when the taxpayer should be asking their elected representatives, who exactly is running Irish Rail"
