In October 2015, as the Taoiseach exhorted the people to keep the recovery going, he warned:

[We] are facing a fork in the road. One track points to continued stability and certainty ... along the other track lies instability and chaos.

Unfortunately, for the citizens of this State and the island, the Taoiseach stayed on the wrong track.

Good Government should be about ending the chaos in health, housing and governance. It should be about ending tax chaos, ending the chaos in the justice system and ending the chaos in industrial relations. That is what the Taoiseach should be doing. However, chaos is now the Taoiseach's middle name. The Taoiseach's ministerial colleagues have brought chaos to the Fine Gael Party. They obsess on who will lead Fine Gael and, by grace of Fianna Fáil, who will lead the Government and when. The Taoiseach's brightest and best jockey for position on WhatsApp and in the media. This is chaos, the Fine Gael way.

Little wonder that outside of the Fine Gael ranks most people do not care. What others care about is the crisis in health, the housing and homelessness emergency and the approach of Brexit. However, the Government appears oblivious to all of these as it meanders aimlessly along the wrong track.

Let us consider the case of the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, the leader of the "Endadependents". If the Taoiseach were to appoint a minister with responsibility for chaos, this Minister would give Leo, Simon I, Simon II and the Taoiseach a run for their money. In September, the Minister, Deputy Ross, briefed the Cabinet on how Bus Éireann was at crisis point. Six months earlier, the National Bus and Rail Union voted in favour of precautionary industrial action amid justifiable fears for workers terms and conditions. What did the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport do? He did nothing. Last month, Bus Éireann announced proposed measures that threatened the rights of bus workers. These included cutting overtime and Sunday rates as well as pay increments. Yesterday, it was reported that the company plans to cut several routes, including the Dublin to Clonmel and Dublin to Derry services, as well as reducing frequency on several others. Of all people, the Taoiseach should know that a significant number of citizens, particularly in rural Ireland, rely on Bus Éireann services. People have the right to a public bus service. The Government's priority should be to create that service, not destroy it. I call on the Taoiseach to get off the chaos carousel, get on the right track - just for a minute - and ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, to do what he should have done months ago: engage with all the stakeholders, including the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, the NTA, Bus Éireann and the unions, to find a resolution of this issue.

That was a well-written speech. The carousel is different to the trampoline. The position is that the fundamentals of dealing with the economy and job creation, as well as tackling difficulties and issues as they arise are a fundamental part of Government. I wish to point out to Deputy Adams that since the then Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, launched the first Action Plan for Jobs in 2012, some 206,200 new jobs have been created. We had lost our independence to the troika, we wallowed in debt and we had a haemorrhage of emigration from so many sectors. Given the sacrifices that the people have had to put up with over those years, we have brought about a situation whereby we are in a better position. There was strong jobs growth in 2016 and a total of 65,100 new jobs. These men and women are going to work every day. The figures show that, for the first time, the number of sustainable non-construction jobs has risen beyond what it was in boom times. This means the economy is very much on the right track; it is far from chaos. Unemployment dropped by 21%, or 40,000, in 2016. By any standard, that is a significant decrease. The unemployment rate is 6.8% - down from 15.2% - and is heading in the right direction.

I have made this point to Deputy Adams before. I welcome the fact that the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, has engaged again in respect of the difficulties between unions and Bus Éireann. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, has been very consistent in his statements, saying this issue will only be resolved through constructive and realistic dialogue. Deputy Adams knows that. Obviously, these WRC-initiated discussions are an important step forward, complex, difficult and tension-filled though they may be.

The Government urges all parties to use the experience and knowledge of the WRC to assist this process. I do not wish to comment on specific elements of proposals that are the subject of negotiations, including any proposals that might arise regarding changes to Expressway services. I encourage others to respect the integrity and experience of the WRC process and to allow both sides to conclude their discussions.

I have stated on numerous occasions that the NTA will continue to use its statutory powers to ensure there will be continued public transport connectivity for local communities across Ireland, and the Minister strongly supports that. It has been done in the past and will be done again in the future. The Deputy can take it that the Ministers to whom he refers have no intention of collapsing the Executive here, as Sinn Féin did in the North.

The Taoiseach praised Martin McGuinness a few days ago and I took that in good faith. Martin McGuinness stepped out of the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister because he could not abide by allegations of corruption. He did the right thing and the Taoiseach, of all people, should appreciate that. Incidentally, I send best wishes to all the Fine Gael, Labour Party and Fianna Fáil candidates in the election in the North as well.

What about Independents?

Would the Deputy include People Before Profit in that?

I asked the Taoiseach if he would ask the Minister, Deputy Ross, to engage with the key stakeholders in the Bus Éireann dispute, but he failed to answer my question. Our public transport network is in a perpetual state of chaos. The Luas and Dublin Bus workers were on strike last year, there has been a troubling review by the NTA and there are the ongoing difficulties with Bus Éireann. All of this is the result of a decade of underinvestment. Now, it is expected more routes might be cut. These connect people and communities and they connect rural Ireland with urban centres. Public transport can reduce traffic congestion. It links communities and improves local as well as larger economies.

The Deputy must conclude.

It also protects the environment. It is not necessarily about making profit but about a public service. That is why it is called "public transport". Will the Taoiseach ensure that the Minister, Deputy Ross, engages with all of the stakeholders to bring this dispute to an end and to build, develop and sustain a proper public bus service?

The Minister, Deputy Ross, is very true to his office and is supportive of everybody getting together under the experienced aegis of the WRC. It is not like situations in the past when personalities might appear late at night and say they had put in a word and the situation was sorted. This is a difficult dispute and there are some technical issues that are quite complex. However, the experience of the WRC is available to both the unions and Bus Éireann. Rumours or perceptions of the free travel scheme being taken away are false. The NTA has already confirmed that it is prepared to step in, as it has previously, to ensure the continuation of public transport to connect places in rural Ireland that might be deprived of it arising from any changes that might be introduced by Bus Éireann arising from its discussions with the unions.

I hope both sides can get together. The engagement of the WRC in the last few days has been very helpful. It is very experienced in dealing with issues such as this. The Deputy knows as well as I do that, ultimately, it will only be resolved by people sitting around a table, discussing their differences and arriving at conclusions. In that regard, the NTA is quite prepared to take up any slack that might arise from changes that take place as a result of the discussions. I hope it can be sorted very quickly.