A consultative forum on the future of Bus Éireann's Expressway service would be wrong in the current "heat of industrial disputes", Minister for Transport Shane Ross has said.

A consultative forum had merit he said, but there was no guarantee there would not be the “kind of megaphone diplomacy that has been going on during the industrial relations problems we have at the moment”.

He was responding to Sinn Féin spokeswoman Imelda Munster who warned that "setting up a forum after Expressway has been extinguished is not good enough".

The Louth TD said that Expressway, which employed 800 workers, was under threat of privatisation and Bus Éireann management had told the Minister that to continue the service “it would have to be a low pay, low wage project”.

Mr Ross, she said, “did not give an opinion either way”.

She said private companies could amend their contract the day after being given them. “They can drop the least profitable routes and some of the services on a particular day.”

Ms Munster said it was not just a question of profit or privatisation. “This should be regarded as a public service.”

The Minister said the Expressway service was loss making, which affected Bus Éireann’s overall profit. Last year the company as a whole lost €5 million and forecast losses of €6 million this year, he said.

“Clearly these losses are not sustainable and the company is required to address them.”

He said issues relating to pay and conditions in any particular State-owned company under the aegis of his department were a matter for discussion and agreement between the employer and its employees.

‘Commercial company’

Mr Ross insisted “I will not be directly intervening in any operational matter being run by any of these companies, particularly a commercial company”.

The Minister pointed out that 28 million people travelled on licensed bus services last year with over seven million travelling on Bus Éireann Expressway services.

Mr Ross said passenger numbers increased by one million between 2012 and 2015 on intercity routes but that was not reflected in the Expressway operation which had lost 6 per cent in passenger numbers in the same period.

“The company obviously has very big problems. It receives no exchequer funding,” he said.

There were only a couple of options open to the company and it was considering them, the Minister added.

But Ms Munster said “Expressway is our national carrier and these plans threaten to drive it to extinction”.

She said the issuing of commercial bus licences could potentially impact the company, but Mr Ross said only five new licences had been issued in the intercity market since 2010.

Ms Munster criticised the Minister for failing to convene a consultative forum with all the relevant stakeholders.

But the Minister said that in the Dublin Bus dispute “people were saying one thing publicly and another privately. That is the way industrial disputes are conducted in public but it would not be helpful to have a consultative process in the midst of that because all that would happen would be that in the heat of industrial dispute, that forum would be used for other purposes.”