Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We were conscious of the fact that decisions were being made outside of the political process which were going to have a really serious impact on us at some stage. We knew that. We knew it afterwards when everybody was advising us that there would have to be two bailouts because one would not be enough. That impacted on the people we were trying to borrow money from and agree a settlement of some description with. They immediately said that the country had gone bust forever. That was the conclusion they were coming to. Certain information was put into the public arena without due research, for want of a better description.

Reference has been made to the children's hospital an example that went out of control. It never went out of control. An identifiable cost analysis was never done. Remember that it was two contracts, with one underground and one overground. One had to be started before the other. Without a doubt, the overground one started before the underground one. In the course of that, there were delays from changes in the economy, supplies, costs, inflation and so on. If there is a big project, it is going to be affected by the downward trends or the upward trends, as they may apply. I hear, including in the House, that we should never have had the children's hospital at all, and that we should have split it up into a whole series of hospitals all over the country. That would be diversification in a new way. What it would have done, of course, would be to double the cost, but we never got into that and will never investigate that fully. It would be double the cost because the same basic infrastructure would have to be introduced in every area without the necessity of explaining the economic benefit in that particular area vis-à-visthe rest of the country.

I was present during the whole course of the debate in committee and in the House from the very beginning. I heard outlandish praises of it in the House afterwards, which were just appalling, because there was no basis whatsoever for coming to any conclusion, because no cost analysis was done at all. When the information became available, it was the same as it is now. Everyone said it was an overrun of twice or three times. It is not. It was the only solid cost-benefit analysis that was done at all. The construction sector came up with the final analysis. It has experts and they were right at the time. That is what it costs to do it.

Another issue is broadband. The general reaction in the House was that broadband is very expensive and we cannot afford it. The appraisal at the time was that we could not do otherwise but afford it, but it was not. Instead everyone said that it was costing too much, at some €3 billion, how that was terrible, and we could not have that. We got to a situation where we are second-guessing ourselves to such an extent that everybody is afraid to make a decision. That is my view. Everybody is afraid to make the decision, stand over it and ensure it is greeted with success.

I agree that there is a necessity to spread development throughout the country. To a greater extent, all we have to do at any time is visit the areas that have had intense development and investment, and necessarily so, and go then to the areas that the last speaker has been referring to, where there are obvious needs to be addressed. I cannot understand why we do not do that all the time. For instance, at Christmastime, I took a drive around the country. We did not have a holiday during the year because of various other issues. We travelled around a good bit. It is amazing how much you can travel today. The first thing is connectivity, which means roads. It is no good saying that we will replace all the roads with railways and have a roll-on, roll-off in every town and village. That cannot work. If you want to go to Paris and want a roll-off fare by rail to go to Moscow, that is fine. That is justifiable. You can see why that has to happen because you have either one, two or three stops. In this country, you would need a stop at every gateway on the way. We cannot do that. The amount of investment in that area is massive and it would not work. One could talk with anybody, as I have, and they will say that it will work and will be better. It will not be better. It will be disastrous.

We decided over years to have dual carriageway roads. We hustled around. We could not develop them and did not have the money for them or motorways. There should have been a straight road right across the country, with one covering the south east and so on. It is coming on stream now but is years late. There would be one for the north midlands to Donegal. That is equal administration of the funds available. I think we have no option except to try to ensure we develop those not as they are needed, because that is too late, but before they are needed. They need to be justified on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis and so on.

Going west, I noticed the significant heavy vehicular traffic coming towards me on either a single carriageway or a seriously deficient carriageway of an old road. That is ridiculous. Investors would look at the country, which they are used to doing, and identify the areas that are readily approachable by road, rail, or air, whatever the case may be. We still need to deal with areas where roads were not built for whatever reason, such as lack of cash. We cannot walk away from it. The people in Europe can say they are phasing out traffic on roads. That is grand for them. They already have the roads. It does not suit us. We need to talk about what suits us in this part of the world. We are living in an increasingly hostile global environment for many reasons, which we will go into some other time.

The other issue that I think is important is that there is no doubt the political system has failed to a certain extent. No other system has come to the rescue. That about sums it up. People travelling in these areas would know from a visual observation that they are suffering a deficiency. How do we deal with it? For example, if I am living in Donegal, I am not going to make a case for the Pale, the inner city or something like that, unless I am a fool. There is an element where we need to recognise each other's position. What is in one region's interest today can be another region's interest tomorrow. Look at the eastern region at the present time. If one takes a trip from Swords in north County Dublin, across that general area, through Santry and right into the city here, one can consider the significant investment that has rightly gone into the area, but it did not have to go into that area. We would have less road congestion and less congestion of every description, including in the city area, if we had been able to offload some of that to other areas not so far away, and it would encourage some congestion in areas that have not suffered from it. I am only saying that tongue in cheek.

I am merely suggesting that we encourage the investment to go into those areas to a greater extent than it has, without suffering as a result. The suffering that could come onto those areas relates to large expanses of the countryside, which we can now drive to more quickly, given we have motorways. There is a lot of room for investment and diversification that can, should and will come, but I fear it will come too late. I fear the damage will have been done to the areas that are heavily congested at the moment by virtue of overcrowding, two-hour journeys and so on.

We need to do one thing in preparation. We can considerably relieve congestion on our roads in, for instance, the area where I live by suggesting the staggering of traffic, with different starting times for various businesses, enterprises and so on, and getting co-operation because they will do that. They will co-operate because it will be of great benefit to them. We should try to avoid situations such as one I saw recently. I was driving to Belfast and two trucks on the road in front of me were driving at more than 100 mph. I am sure they were not supposed to be doing that, but they were. The problem was the two carriageways were occupied by the two trucks. Even 100 mph was slow in comparison with what the rest of the traffic wanted to do, given all the other drivers were lined up behind them. They could not see beyond the trucks. Someone said to me recently that they could not have been doing 100 mph, but I was tracking them-----