Rail strike: Ministers in flight of fancy

THE dispute between the country’s rail unions and Irish Rail shows no sign whatsoever of being moved towards a settlement: the unions — four of them — have started their one-day strike programmes, and warned that they are thinking about action that will close the network during the Christmas and new year holidays. And there’s talk of walk-outs hitting bus services early in the new year.

It looks depressingly like a contest in which neither side has the space in which to make the give-and-take concessions needed for a satisfactory resolution. Rail users, meanwhile, look on from the sidelines, changing their plans — if they can — and looking for alternatives on increasingly busy roads. They might, not unreasonably, turn to the Government, which owns Irish Rail.

This, in fact, is what the unions did a couple of months ago, when Siptu urged transport minister Shane Ross to intervene. “Our members . . . are calling upon him to use the