As Transport Minister, Ross has a duty to help avoid a national shutdown

IHAVE seen this from the inside for almost four years, as a very hapless Government press person. It would be too embarrassing to tell you how long I have been looking at this type of situation from close up.

It tells me that Transport Minister Shane Ross is between a rock and a hard place. It is a tough time for him, as he must take some tricky decisions or carry the can for a big national mess.

But quite frankly, that is all called politics. Mr Ross was first elected to the Dáil in February 2011 and finally became a member of Cabinet after his re-election, at the formation of the minority Coalition, in May 2016.

But he has been at Leinster

House as a senator for the 30 years from 1981 to 2011. Before and during that period, he was involved in finance and also a financial journalist with our sister paper, the ‘Sunday Independent’.

Over the years, Mr Ross has had first-class honours in being right about all that was wrong. Now he is charged with finding remedies – a job that is slower, more complex and replete with obstacles.

All the signals are that we will have a Bus Éireann strike, which will likely quickly become a national transport strike.

The problem has bounced about for several months and Mr Ross and his Government colleagues have repeatedly said it is a matter the industrial relations mechanisms to resolve.

But this one has not gone away. Signs now are that we are on the cusp of a national transport shutdown.

How can anyone have the job title of Transport Minister and tell the nation a cessation of publicly funded transport services is an industrial relations matter? It is time that Mr Ross remembered that he is in fact the Transport Minister. That is a job that requires remedies, not declamation, criticism and condemnation.

The Bus Éireann problems are not just an industrial relations issue. They are at the heart of national transport policy and how we fund services as a public good.

The Transport Minister cannot hang back from this one. We need serious political engagement.