On Monday, the workers at Bus Éireann will embark on an all-out strike in an attempt to protect their livelihoods and to protect our public transport network right across the State. They will do so in the face of the refusal by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, to do his job. They will do so in the face of the determination of management and Government to burden workers with the financial responsibility for this crisis, which was created by Government policy and mismanagement.

The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport and the Minister's Government are putting his privatisation agenda ahead of the needs of the citizens of this State. The plan is the same here as it is with his approach to other vital services such as health, housing and education. The steps are the same in every case - starve the service of investment, implement draconian cuts, foster disputes and inconvenience the public to the point of anger. The model of public ownership is then blamed and the workers are penalised in order to create a false justification for privatisation. The destruction of our public services is an inside job.

The Minister's Government and the Minister, Deputy Ross, are responsible for the shambles that exists in Bus Éireann. The Minister, Deputy Ross, has shown a complete lack of leadership on this issue. The Government is happy to sit on the sidelines and let the chaos unfold. The Taoiseach said this week that both he and the Cabinet fully support the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, the same Minister who acts as if his job description had been written by H.G. Wells - the Minister, Deputy Shane Ross, the invisible man of Irish politics.

The Government's privatisation agenda is very clear, but the ordinary workers of Bus Éireann see right through it, as do the people living in rural Ireland. Bus Éireann workers will not allow the Government, the Minister, Deputy Ross, or company management to destroy their livelihoods, dismantle the services they worked so hard to provide and then blame them for the mess that the Government created. It is not an easy thing to vote for strike. Sinn Féin commends those workers on their brave decision. We understand the reasons for that decision. We understand the inflammatory proposals that were put before the workers and we stand fully behind them as they prepare to stand on a picket line next Monday.

The communities of rural Ireland know well by now that the Government is no friend of theirs. The Minister's plan to destroy our public transport network further underlines the great isolation being imposed on people living in rural communities by the decisions taken by his party over the past six years. They will now wonder how they will get to work, to hospital appointments or to visit family. The message to rural Ireland is very clear. The Government has abandoned rural Ireland.

My question is very simple. Will the Minister demand, not ask, urge or suggest, but demand that the Minister, Deputy Ross, get involved in a practical way to see a resolution, or even that he allow his Department to get involved?

This Government is about rebuilding our public services. The reason we are able to do that is because, in the past 12 months alone, we have seen 65,000 extra people back at work. That has provided €1 billion in additional resources for this House to allocate to public services. We are doing that.

In less than two weeks, 800,000 people will get a social welfare increase for the first time in eight years. That includes carers, disabled people, unemployed people and sick people. That is rebuilding our public services. Some €1.5 billion has been reinvested into our health service. Some 250,000 more people are getting operations in our public hospitals now than there were four years ago because we are reinvesting. There are problems because we have had a lost decade in public services, but we are now rebuilding that service. In my area, 5,000 extra teachers and special needs assistants will, between this September and next, be going back into our schools to provide particularly for children with special needs or with disadvantage. We are rebuilding in areas where damage has been done.

When we come to the issue of the public transport service, last year we provided a 21% increase in the subvention to Bus Éireann and other public service obligation bodies. This year, there will be another 11%. That is a one third increase in the investment we are making in the delivery of public services. There is a problem with Expressway. This is an area where Dublin Bus has to go head to head with private competition. It is losing money heavily in that regard and this is an issue at the heart of this industrial dispute. The Deputy asked why the Minister does not intervene. There has been a very long history in Ireland of Ministers not politicising industrial disputes. We have very professional services in the Workplace Relations Commission that support the resolution of even the most intractable dispute.

Those are the professional services that should be used. It is not by accident that we protect those services from political interference, because their very effectiveness depends on them not being undermined by politicians.

This is a difficult area, but on every front we are doing what people are saying needs to be done. We are increasing the subvention for public services, reconsidering the contract for social welfare customers and we are ensuring that the National Transport Authority will be available if a rural service needs to be restored. It will stand available to provide that on a new basis as a public service contract.

This dispute centres on an area where, under law, subvention cannot be given to Expressway, which is competing head-to-head with private sector providers. That is the law of the land, which the Minister is correctly observing. We need to try to find a resolution and I urge the parties to return to the very experienced people in the WRC to seek a resolution to this dispute and protect people who depend on services.

Our public transport subvention is the lowest in Europe. I am blue in the face listening to the Minister, Deputy Ross, and Government representatives saying that this is an industrial dispute. For the past five months, the Government has been asked repeatedly to engage with all of the stakeholders, including the NTA, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Bus Éireann management and the unions, but has repeatedly refused to do so. This was long before strike action was called. We are now four days out from an all-out strike in our public transport network. The Government is still refusing to engage with stakeholders or demand that the Minister engage with the stakeholders involved to find a resolution to the crisis.

There are two clear Government policies that have become apparent over the past while. The first is the race to the bottom for workers' rights, pay and conditions. The second is the outsourcing and privatisation of our public transport network. How any Government in its right mind could stand over those two issues is beyond belief. Given that we are facing all-out strike action on Monday and disruption across the public transport network, will the Government demand that the Minister, Deputy Ross, appear from wherever he is hiding and become involved in the negotiations?

By no means are we involved in a race to the bottom. There has been an 11% increase in employment, which means that 200,000 people are back at work and 200,000 extra pay packages are going into family homes. Those pay packages are larger than they were in 2011. Not only have we more jobs, but also higher wages. That is because of the successful policy implemented by this and the previous Government. It was a policy which Sinn Féin opposed at every opportunity. The policy has been successful and is rebuilding wage levels, jobs and enterprises. We are ploughing that money back into public services.

As I said, we have increased the subvention for public transport by 33%. We are putting money back into delivering public services. In terms of this dispute, the WRC is the professional body that needs to bring the two parties together to try to find a resolution to the differences. That is the approach that will resolve this dispute.