A British-based transport union has urged the Government to "think again" about its plans to introduce competition into the Irish market.
The Transport Salaried Staffs Association claims policies similar to those mooted by the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, have caused "chaos" in Britain.
Mr Gerry Doherty, the union's development manager, said privatisation of services in Britain had been bad for customers, taxpayers and staff.
It was "reasonable to suppose", he claimed, that the experience would be similar in Ireland.
Discussions are taking place between unions and Mr Brennan regarding his plans to dismantle CIÉ and open up 25 per cent of the Dublin bus market to competition by next January.
The planned reforms are designed to give the general public a more efficient, reliable and cost-effective transport service, according to Mr Brennan.
Mr Doherty said the argument advanced by the then Conservative government for splitting up and selling off Britain's rail and bus services in the 1980s and early 1990s was that competition would push up standards, drive down costs and be better for employees and the public alike.
The reality, however, was "quite different".
"Having first-hand experience of the chaos resulting from policies similar to those mooted by Minister Brennan," Mr Doherty said, "I ask the Irish people to cast a glance over the water to Britain to see the results of selling off public transport."
British taxpayers, he continued, were paying at least three times the subsidy to privately run rail companies than they had to the state-owned British Rail, with punctuality and reliability of rail services falling "drastically".
The experience for bus users was no better.
After 17 years of privately run buses, the director of independent pressure group Transport 2000 had complained recently that buses were infrequent, had poor connections to other modes of transport, lacked passenger security and staff were indifferent to passengers.
Private bus and rail companies had reduced costs by "driving down wages", Mr Doherty added, leading to a "dramatic fall in drivers' pay and a "crisis in recruitment".
Mr Doherty, who is now based in London, is a former Irish secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, which has an office in Dublin. The union has 32,000 members in transport companies, including approximately 1,800 in the Republic.
