I call Deputy Clare Daly from the Technical Group and I ask for order.

I find it incredibly ironic that a couple of weeks ago those in government were falling over themselves on the Government benches to express their solidarity with Dunnes Stores workers and their horror about the repressive and anti-worker onslaught of the Heffernan family. Yet here we are today with the Government playing the role of Margaret Heffernan in a battle against the country's bus workers. The Government can dress it up any way it wishes. It can try to hide behind the Minister for Transport, Deputy Donohoe, and Eoin O'Duffy's descendants sitting behind the Minister, but the reality is that there is a huge significance in the fact that these workers will be involved in industrial action and protest action on May Day, international workers day, against a decision made by a Government made up of the party founded by James Connolly to defend workers' interests. How far ye have travelled.

Let us be clear. No worker ever wants to go on strike. These bus workers are making a stand not just to defend their terms and conditions but to make a stand against privatisation and in defence of public services. In recent weeks we have had to listen to Government representatives trying to persuade them that this is not about privatisation but about competitive tendering. Guess what? They called it competitive tendering and franchising in Britain but it still ended up with British Rail being handed over to private companies, with prices and subsidies rising and big payouts to shareholders.

The Government has tried to persuade us that it is not its fault and that Fianna Fáil started it. It is right. It certainly did, but the reason this Government is in power is because people thought it would be different, not that it would carry on what Fianna Fáil had started. It has also said it is the fault of the European Union but there is nothing in the EU directive of 2007 which demands competitive tendering. In fact, it specifically states the Government does not have to have it so it should stop trying to con people. Nobody is falling for it.

I ask the Minister and his Government to stop blaming Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann workers for what is going on. How could any right thinking worker believe statements from the Government that their terms and conditions will be protected and that they will not have to transfer when they know that their colleagues in Team Aer Lingus, for example, had not only commitments but significant and supposedly legally binding letters of guarantee that would not happen to them, but it did? How could these people believe the press statements from the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, that their pensions will be maintained when their colleagues from the DAA and Aer Lingus will be assembling in their hundreds tomorrow outside the Aer Lingus annual general meeting because their retirement pensions have been decimated? Would the Government not just come clean and admit that what is going on here is a classic situation that Noam Chomsky described as the standard technique of privatisation - "defund, make sure things don't work, get people angry ... [and then] hand it over to private capital".

The tactic of getting people angry may be one that is practised by the Deputy opposite but it is certainly not one that is practised on this side of the House.

It was when the Deputy was on this side.

The Labour Party would have won an Oscar for being angry when it was in opposition.

It is very regrettable that it now appears there is likely to be a strike this weekend. This is a pity as it will have an impact not just on the workers concerned, which I understand, but also on commuters across the country on a bank holiday weekend. It is regrettable and a great pity that it could not have been avoided and averted.

I am not, contrary to the Deputy's accusation, in the business of blaming people - management, workers or anyone else. I very much hope that some time in the very near future it will be possible for the parties to get around the table and reach an agreement on the issues involved. Deputy Daly, in her normal way, delivered a little lecture to me about trade union solidarity but I know all about the trade unions in the bus company and I know the efforts they have made in recent years, along with management, to transform the company and ensure that it is a good, strong public service company for the people of this city and elsewhere in the country. I am sure it will go from strength to strength, with strong management and strong trade unions. That is what makes a company like Dublin Bus successful.

The broader issue is that in a growing economy like ours the Government wants to ensure that commuters have the best service available to them to get to and from their place of work speedily and efficiently. We are greatly concerned that this industrial action is happening in circumstances where the NTA is carrying out its statutory duty of proceeding with a tendering process that has resulted from its assessment of how best to direct and award tendered PSO bus services in the public interest. The strike action will cause considerable disruption over the weekend to the public across the country and will inevitably damage the company's finances if it goes ahead.

The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Donohoe, confirmed yesterday that following detailed discussions with the bus companies, management was willing to give a commitment that no driver currently employed would be required to transfer to another operator unless he or she wished to do so. It is not a question of transferring to another company and having concerns about terms and conditions of employment in that new company because no worker will be compelled to transfer to a private operator. I appreciate and accept that the unions have other concerns but the best way for them to be resolved is around the table. The unions should sit down and do what they do so well, as they have done in Dublin Bus, and seek to reach agreement in the interests of their own members and of the broader community.

There are so many contradictions that it is hard to know where to start. If Dublin Bus is so great and everything is going so well, why in God's name is the Government breaking it up and undermining it? If the Labour Party believes in a public transport system, why did it stay in Government for four years and stand over a falling subvention for bus services every year up to 2014? The subvention has been cut for the past seven years, four of them on the Labour Party's watch. Why does the Minister's party stand over the crazy situation of reducing the subvention instead of increasing it thereby taking people out of their cars in order to address issues like climate change? Instead, this Government has continued the obscenity of spending €50 million annually to fund the west-link toll bridge company, NTR, not to mention the millions spent on PPPs for roads that are not being used sufficiently. Why is that money not invested in public transport?

The Minister has said that the bus drivers do not need to worry because they will not be transferring but let us look at that commitment, even though nobody believes any commitments this Government makes any more. The Minister expects us to believe that the company is going to carry an extra 10% of workers but at the end of 2019, that will be used against it to argue that the company is uncompetitive. It will be used as a justification for further privatisation, as history has already taught us.

I know that the Minister is familiar with the writings of James Connolly and he will probably attend the memorial service at his grave next week. No doubt Connolly will be doing some turning in that grave when the Labour Party shows up. That aside, Connolly said that "governments in capitalist societies are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class". I believe he was right and that is exactly what the Labour Party is doing. Why does it not just fold up the red flag and join the boys in blue behind it?

When one prepares for Leader's Questions, the writings of Noam Chomsky are not usually in one's briefing notes. I must congratulate Deputy Daly for being able to bring in quotations from both Chomsky and Connolly but let us look at the real issues that are facing the people of Dublin and the people in the bus company. The Deputy is wrong in her great survey and is all over the shop on the Government. She forgot to mention, because it would not suit her rhetoric, that last year Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann were paid more than €90 million in PSO payments by the taxpayer, over and above the passenger fare income, to provide public bus services. A further €90 million in funding was also provided for new buses and the upgrade of the fleet. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport ---

We have one of the lowest levels of PSO payments in Europe.

The problem is that when people make an allegation and get an answer they do not like they try to stop one answering. The fact is that this Government is investing in public transport and in the bus companies.

We have one of the lowest levels of PSO payments in Europe.

The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport recently put on record his commitment to securing an increase in the subvention provided to the companies to deliver additional services and increase frequency for commuters. The Deputies do not want to hear that either. This year, for the first time since 2008, the PSO contribution for bus and rail services is being maintained at the same level as last year.

After years of cuts.

That is action taken by this Government and by the two parties in government. I am proud of what the Labour Party is doing in government in every respect. I would like to debate with the Deputy at some point her perspective on what Connolly would do today or what he would think we should be doing today. I would not mind having that debate with the Deputy some time to expose the absolute bankruptcy of the position that she and some of her colleagues try to advocate in here every day of the week. We do not have time for that today.

No, we do not.

I look forward to doing it on another occasion.