Civil servants need to “come out of the shadows” and have a proper debate about public transport, the National Bus and Rail Union has said.

The union’s general secretary Dermot O’Leary made the comments ahead of another Dublin Bus work stoppage, which which is now under way, having started at 9pm Thursday evening.

No Dublin Bus routes, sightseeing tours or Airlink services will operate on Friday or Saturday. Nitelink services will also not operate this weekend.

Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr O’Leary said he was trying to focus on “the permanent government, the lifers, the civil servants who dictate how people are paid in the transport sector and how services are run, but they’re answerable to nobody”.

Mr O’Leary said the National Transport Authority was handing out operating licences and encouraging the privatisation of public transport.

The comments come amid growing disquiet among staff in Bus Éireann’s regional Expressway service.

“There is a function for government in a proper regulated system. Unfortunately, in this country, small as it is, we have a National Transport Authority – the HSE on wheels we call it, issuing licences and allowing markets to go. In Dublin in 2011 there were 52 services on a daily basis, there is now 84. Ireland is a small country, we can’t sustain that level of activity.”

Race to the bottom

Mr O’Leary said that Bus Éireann has come under pressure because of Department of Transport policy “which is now resulting in the transfer of reasonably paid jobs, despite the demand for a pay rise, into low-cost operators and a race to the bottom. We’ve been saying this for many years. The department is very much involved behind the scenes in dismantling Bus Éireann,” he said.

“People have a responsibility here. They either want a properly functioning, reasonably well-paid public transport service or they want a race to the bottom, British style, where people come in, flood the market with low cost operators, then end up with a situation where people disappear from those markets and end up with a monopoly of one or two private operators sucking up taxpayers’ money.”

Dublin Bus has warned staff the current waves of strikes was having “a catastrophic impact” on finances and that if all planned work stoppages went ahead it could cost the company €21 million.

Chief executive Ray Coyne said this could plunge Dublin Bus back into the financial difficulties it faced after the economic crash in 2010 which could lead to cutbacks.