Shane Ross’s artful inaction may actually enable him to deliver on strike

Ireland desperately needs more public transport. In rural areas it’s anaemic, says Gerard Howlin.

TIME is one of the most effective, and sometimes insidious tools of policy.

Those who have it, and master the art of using it, are lords of all they survey. But if it runs out, it doesn’t matter how strong your case, or how powerful your lobby; it’s over.

I have a sense, that among all the issues underlying the Bus Éireann strike, time is the most potent.

Unusually, it’s the minister Shane Ross who has it on his side. And, he has unquestionably grasped the art of masterly inactivity. It is an underestimated and more difficult pursuit that usually understood.

To do something — to do anything — is a primal impulse. Activity is equated with productivity and usefulness. In politics, the whole purpose of being there is to ‘do something’.

In fact, by doing absolutely nothing, Ross has a chance of achieving a lot, because time is on his side. It is essential of course that busybodies in the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), don’t get to work and tamper with a resolution which only time can deliver.

There is a very short dotted line connecting the outrageous Labour Court settlement of the Luas dispute last June, with the cave-in to gardaí last November with the assumption that the State will fold and settle at Bus Éireann.

Last Friday’s wildcat strike was based on the premise, still extant, that if the State won’t fold over Bus Éireann, it certainly will fold over an all-out public transport strike.

An epic event in my childhood was the coincidence of a bus strike and a postal strike in 1979. Both brought the country to a standstill. Army lorries served as makeshift buses.

In an era before electronic banking and when cheques were ubiquitous, well the cheque couldn’t be put in the post. The economy came to a virtual standstill.

It deeply undermined Jack Lynch who was replaced by Charles Haughey that December.

In the early noughties something important happened. As the economy grew, the growth in the volume of post failed to keep pace. Technology, not ideology, ended a public monopoly.

Something called email caught on, and what was an essential public service became snail mail, increasingly used now as a novelty for Christmas cards and correspondence for which no excuse can be entertained, for you not having received it. But generally it’s on the wane. With it, went the potent power of postal workers.

Unlike the postal service, public transport is more important than ever. In my view it is an essential public service. What has changed is the monopoly status of public transport companies.

Exclude the PSO routes, and private companies operating a public service under licence from a State body called the National Transport Authority, carry about 16 million passengers, compared to Bus Éireann’s 7 million.

The strike is a major issue, but it’s not standstill. There is no compelling dynamic creating an inexorable force for Shane Ross to step in to personally or vicariously settle this strike with public money. In the case of Luas, a private company with private shareholders settled.

In the case of gardaí the Government was foolishly manoeuvred into providing an all you can eat buffet by the WRC. It couldn’t face down its own industrial relations machinery.

It was afraid to face down a police force apparently on the verge of mutiny. And, breaking their sworn oath would have been mutiny.

Bus Éireann workers are not in remotely as powerful a position. Their monopoly has been sufficiently hollowed out, to the point where it no longer has a deadly effect.

This comes back to the issue of time. This is day-13 of an all-out strike. It is hurting bus workers, who must realise, the time frame is stretching interminably. That was the basis of the rush to picket Dublin Bus and Irish Rail last Friday morning.

Only an all-out strike has even the shadow of the capacity required to move this into becoming a political event, as distinct from another industrial relations issue.

They are stranded as legatees in a public company, surrounded by competitors who can provide public services more competitively.

Every day that passes means Bus Éireann’s bottom line deteriorates further.

The NTA withholds from the company €125,000 every weekday and €75,000 every Saturday and Sunday, for which PSO services are not provided. That is not to speak of the fare income lost.

Passengers who can are going elsewhere and many will not return. Bus Éireann workers are not paid outrageously. But they are reasonably paid and pensioned.

The problem is that their package is based on exploitation of outrageous work practices, and inefficiencies. These make the company’s unsubsidised Expressway service unviable.

It has also lifted the lid on an unpalatable truth that a country with a plethora of private sector providers doesn’t need Bus Éireann to provide an Expressway service at all.

The underlying issue is a tension between how available resources for public services should be divided as between better paid public servants or more public services. We desperately need more public transport. In rural areas it’s anaemic.

What is required are small, agile companies that respond to actual need on the ground and can use modern technology including apps and GPS to allow passengers use and connect more easily.

There is still an astonishing situation in Dublin where long-promised tendering for a paltry 10% of bus routes remains a work-in-progress.

Only companies with a turnover of €30 million need apply. The cost base inherent in public companies means they require far more subsidy to deliver the same level of service, while we need more.

There is no effective housing policy possible without a transport policy that connects the places where houses can be built, with the places where people need to go to work.

This requires massive investment in more services, and the capital investment has to be underlain by an ongoing current cost of providing those services which is affordable.

This strike is about a fundamental policy issue. It’s about power and it’s about time. Each day sees the company in a weaker position. What’s to share is inevitably less.

Looking past this dispute, the longer time goes on, paradoxically it leaves the minister in a stronger position afterwards, to pursue the policy he wants. That, of course, assumes he has what it takes to formulate and go after any policy direction proactively.

Having the gumption to sit it out, is as admirable a quality as it is rare. It is not the same, however, as being determined to take advantage of events, when they play into your hand. Ross has the contempt of a cynic in the face of demands for action.

It is serving him well for now. It remains to be seen if he has the energy of an idealist to deliver change — his artful inaction now may enable him to deliver.

Ireland desperately needs more public transport. In rural areas it’s anaemic