More than 100 people turned out in Clonmel on Thursday night to protest against the decision by Bus Éireann to close the town’s regular service to Dublin.
The “Save Our Bus” meeting was organised by the National Bus and Railworkers Union (NBRU) in response to Bus Éireann’s cost-cutting plans which the company says are necessary as part of efforts to stave off insolvency plans.
The X7 route, Dublin-Clonmel, is one of three to be axed by Bus Éireann, with its eight daily services each way.
Last night’s meeting was attended by service-users, bus drivers and their families, and politicians, as well as NBRU officials, and took place just days before an indefinite strike planned to start on Monday.
NBRU general-secretary Dermot O’Leary said the country was now on “the cusp of a national travel dispute” and other services could end up affected. “There’s going to be contagion. As much as I’d like to stop the contagion, I don’t know if I’ll be able to to stop it.”
Among the local organisers was bus driver Mark Fitzgerald, who worked regularly on the Clonmel route until it was reconfigured in 2015. He said he was "very disappointed" when he heard of Bus Éireann's plans to eliminate the service.
"The old route number seven was a real, proper social bus service," he told The Irish Times. "But they wanted to go out onto the motorway. We [drivers] didn't like it because we felt we were abandoning people in Castlecomer and Crettyard and Carrick-on-Suir. Now we find out, a year and a half later, that it's going as well."
Crossroads
Until 2015 the old Route 7 went from Dublin to Cork and vice versa, taking in Kilkenny and Clonmel along the way. However, it also had stops at Athy, Bagenalstown, Castlecomer, Carlow, Carrick-on-Suir and Kilsheelan, among other towns, as well as a number of stops at crossroads.
That route was scrapped and the X7 arrived in its stead, cutting out the Clonmel-Cork portion of the journey and also eliminating Carrick-on-Suir and Castlecomer and some of the less-frequented stops.
The journey time from Dublin to Clonmel was slashed from over three hours and 15 minutes to two and a half hours as a result.
The NBRU member, who is based in the Waterford depot which oversees services from Dungarvan and Wexford as well as Clonmel, accepted “there are certain times of the day when you have few passengers” but he said there were other times when it was busy.
He said there were three drawbacks to the withdrawal of the X7 route: the industrial relations impact which would see drivers earmarked for redundancy and others having changes to their working conditions; the “rural network being dismantled in front of our very eyes”; and the effect it and other route cuts could have on the free travel service.
“For a senior citizen, if there’s no bus going through their area the free travel pass is going to be no use to them,” Mr Fitzgerald said.