Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The increase reflects a catching up on the indexation in the agreement between the NRA and NTR.

In reply to Deputy Rabbitte, I accept that during peak hours the M50 is, at times, like a car park and one could not argue against that but the solution to peak hour congestion on the route in the view of traffic engineers is the implementation of the M50 upgrade and barrier free tolling. The traffic level is higher than they believed it would be in 2015 or 2018 and they are examining the issue of building an outer link road but little work has been done on that. Many decisions on these issues were made 20 years ago using estimates of car occupancy up to 2015 but they are history.

The contract for the work on the widening on the road and on the interchanges will go ahead. It cannot be stopped at this stage and it is only a question of starting it. However, we should try to resolve the barrier free tolling issue quickly. I recently saw such tolling working enormously effectively in a country whose population is double ours. It is not the only problem relating to the M50 but this and other issues are being addressed by the upgrading, which will assist traffic flow.

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