The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Cost-cutting campaign against Bus Éireann workers is a nail in the coffin of rural Ireland
SIR, In one of his most celebrated poems, “September 1913,” William Butler Yeats condemns the ruthless manner in which workers were locked out by their employers, giving rise to a winter of poverty and deprivation. John O’Leary (1830 – 1907), an old Fenian, emerges in the poem as the antithesis of the greedy, sordid, grasping merchants and employers of 1913. In the poem, O’Leary is a symbol of integrity, idealism and vision. The refrain used by Yeats in the poem has the heavy beat of a funeral bell:
“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone.
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”
Today’s rural Ireland will suffer the same fate unless it shouts stop with a vengeance. The rural Garda station has been shut. The rural Post Office has been decommissioned. High speed fibre optic broadband has been promised but not rolled out. The bank wants us to do our financial transactions online from the loneliness of the kitchen table. Investment in sports and community facilities, the repair and upgrading of unused premises and the provision of long term sustainable employment in rural Ireland has been negligible to date.
The final nail in the coffin of rural Ireland is the current plight of decent, hard working Bus Éireann employees desperately fighting to retain their jobs in a company whose purpose is to provide a vital public service. If public transport routes are decimated or exclusively privatised rural Ireland will be totally isolated. The Government of the day is legally and morally obliged to provide adequate funding for socially necessary but financially unviable public transport services. It must continue to do so. The taxpayers of Ireland provide the Government with more than enough revenue to ensure that no citizen is left on the side of the road, is forced to miss a vital medical appointment, loses a job or forfeits a college place because of lack of transport.
It is due time for the Minister for Transport to think outside the Pale. Those of us who live outside the M50 are entitled to and need the transport service that we collectively pay for. Rural Ireland needs Bus Éireann. Otherwise, with apologies to WB Yeats, “Rural Ireland’s dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” Sincerely, Billy Ryle, Spa, Tralee.