Hi billy , just one point , the sharp practices I was refering to are not the sins of the 40's or 50's , but the events I refered to happened in the 80's , 90's and up as far as 2003 in Bus Eireann's case , I can think of one Dublin operator , who from the early 90's had to fight Dublin Bus tooth and nail even to have the right to use a bus stop (as D.B. claimed they ALL belong to them) , as recently as 2002 I was in meetings with the two largest private operators representitave groups , and even then they were launching savage attacks on the Dept for "allowing" C.I.E. companies to behave in the way they did (like the Dept could have done anything about it)
Even today , the case with Bus Eireann's behaviour at Cork Airport beggers belief , in 2005 Aer Rianta as it was approached B.E. to provide an increased frequency on the Airport service (which Aer Rianta was subsidising) and they were told that B.E. had neither the buses or manpower for the increase and it would be several YEARS before resources would be available , then enter Skylink in 2006 , suddenly B.E. were able to find an extra 6 buses per hour complete with drivers and a small army of inspectors to take reg. no's and departure times of the Skylinks and follow them around Cork to see what they were doing , and in a final insult , B.E. rebranded their service with the name and identical logo of one of its main competitors on Airport routes with the Bus Eireann Aircoach
Even on this board there is someone who had their own bus company destroyed by sharp C.I.E. practice during the 80's
And in closing , does anyone remember the Sommers report of 1994/95 ? it made many references to the "militant attitude" a certain state company was displaying towards independant operators