Dublin Bus – why the cutbacks?

I see the drivers at Dublin Bus have rejected the ‘compromise’ cuts offered by the company. I’m not surprised. What I am surprised at is Dublin Bus cutting services during a recession. And this goes for Bus Éireann and Iarnrod Éireann as well.

Are the management at these companies on the same planet as the rest of us?

There’s a recession on. The price of fuel is still high, though lower than the record set last year. More people have less money in their pocket, car sales have dropped through the floor. A lot of people can’t afford to drive everywhere now. They should be increasing services, not decreasing them. And they should also drop their fares.

Sound crazy? Think about it. Bus and rail fares in Ireland are staggeringly high. Why do you think buses and trains aren’t full? Fares are too high. People can’t afford it, and it’s cheaper to use your own car. It costs less to fly to London than to get a train from Galway to Dublin! High fares: not many people use trains and buses. Increase fares: LESS people use trains and buses. Decrease services: LESS people use trains and buses. Less people use trains and buses: Companies make less money.

Cut out the middle link – Increase fares, reduce services: the companies make less money. They’re running at a loss now: so that means they’ll increase fares more and cut services again, which means they’ll take in even less money.

Solution: Increase services, cut fares. Many more people will take trains and buses, and thus the company will take in more money.

This is Economics 101, it’s not rocket science.

For me, this really calls into question two things. First of all, the people appointed to boards of publicly owned companies. Are they really up to the job? Let’s look at Aer Lingus and Ryanair. I would bet all the money in my pockets, against all the money in yours, that if the people running Ryanair had been running Aer Lingus instead, then we would now be talking about Aer Lingus buying out Ryanair, not the other way around. Ministerial appointees to State-owned companies are not accountable, not transparent, and extremely open to abuse. Witness former Taoiseach Ahern’s statement, when asked why he’d appointed people to state boards who had been involved in the over-hyped “digout” controversy: “I appointed them because they were my friends, not because they had given me money”. What??? His friends??? Were they even remotely qualified for the jobs they were given? What planet is Fianna Fáil living on?

We need to take a leaf out of the book that is the Constitution of the United States. Any political appointee in the States is vetted by the appropriate committee of the Senate, and only takes office after a vote of the full Senate. I’d suggest the same be applied here, except our Senate is pretty bloody useless, full of failed and wannabe TDs, apart from a notable few like the great David Norris. Senate reform is high on the Green Party’s agenda, apparently, so I hope they’ll include something like this in their reform.

The other question I ask is, should the State really own these companies? Situation recap: we’re broke. I say sell off Iarnrod Éireann, Bus Éireann, and Dublin Bus, all as separate companies, and let them be run in the private sector. Open it up to competition in the bus market. Trains can compete with buses, and we probably shouldn’t copy the English privatisation into a load of different companies there…that’s ended up an enormous, expensive, mess.

Anyway, rant over.