John Dennehy (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

One can drive around the country and if one picks a particular road and says it is in bad condition, there will be a scéal about it. There will be a story covering it. The story will be that it has been taken in charge, or something else. There is no comparison between the road surfaces paid for directly from this money and the situation we had before.

I will be 29.5 years involved in local government in June. If Deputy Ring wins his case, I might hang in for another 30 years or so. I have been honoured to do that job over those years and managed to come top of the poll most of the time. I must have been doing something right. One of the main changes I have seen over that time has been the increase in the funding for surfacing the roads in the area.

Deputy McCormack was also scathing about the money being used, perhaps, for other concerns. I have no problem with that. In Cork we have built a number of pedestrian bridges with moneys from this fund and from the moneys from high-rise parking fees because these areas are complementary to one another. This is a logical approach and I am happy we are taking it.

One of my bugbears, related to our road work, is the digging of trenches on roads which have been resurfaced. In Cork we have resurfaced 97 primary roads. These are road works which are 50% grant aided. Unfortunately, trenches have been opened on a number of them within 12 months of being resurfaced. When I was a member of Cork City Council I repeatedly raised this issue, including and when I chaired the roads committee. The council has now put an agreement in place with service providers that following the reinstatement of the road and a three months settlement period the provider must provide a full lane width replacement. However, I do not like the digging of trenches because somebody must pay for the services being laid. Often it is the taxpayer. Cork has suffered badly in this regard. We started with natural gas and cut up the city streets to replace the old town gas. Three or four years later, there was multi-channel television and the streets were cup up again. There has also been the usual water and electricity repairs and so on, followed by broadband when, again, the streets were cut up.

I do not believe in arguing for the sake of it when I cannot make a positive, constructive argument against something and propose an alternative. For 20 years I have argued that ducting or conduit should be laid at all times when a road is fully reinstated. There should not be any need to cut up roads because the services should be placed in ducting. This was done in the United States a hundred years ago in the sidewalks of New York so I do not see why we cannot do it. I hope the current cost to servicepeople will deter them a little bit in cutting up roads. This money pays for these roads. There is a direct relationship between the two and I do not want to see any of it wasted.

Phenomenal work is being done on all aspects of transport. I listened to the Green Party whingeing as usual about too much money being spent on roads. I travelled both the Watergrasshill and the Kildare bypasses this morning, both of which major projects were opened by the Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan. I feel much safer driving on these roads than the previous old boreen-style road that was south of Kildare.

There is no conflict with the argument put forward by the Green Party about supporting rail over roads. Any project that has been put forward, whether it be in Dublin city or elsewhere, has had its detractors. The country Deputies tend to whinge about Dublin getting everything while Dublin based ones want more. I have not heard the Minister or his colleagues argue with anybody, be it on Luas, metro, railway safety or anything else. The Minister will probably re-open the western rail corridor before he finishes his term in 2007.

See this speech in context