Ms Deirdre Hanlon:

The Senator asked if work that had been done on the scope of inland waterways for freight movement. The short answer is "No". There has not been any examination in detail of either the economic or environmental impact there. There are 1,000 km of inland waterways but these are largely oriented towards recreational use, which has been the focus of their use to date.

Internationally, the bulk of inland waterway usage is concentrated in the Rhine and Danube countries. The former have 85% of this usage within the EU on inland waterways with the latter around 15%. There is practically nothing happening in the other member states.

On the question of investment in new roads, it is important to clear up what might be a misapprehension that are massive plans for the expansion of many more motorways; there are not. The motorway network has been largely completed. This involved considerable investment and was developed largely in the earlier years of this century. The network is there. Together with the national road network, which is far more extensive, it is absorbing the bulk of the investment that there will be in roads in the coming time. The largest proportion of the roads budget is directed at maintaining and keeping in good service what has been built, and being used by people around the country. Some investment is available for new roads, but it is of a much smaller scale compared to what is being invested in keeping the existing network going. This is of a much smaller scale than the investment that will occur in new public transport.