Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

The Taoiseach has to answer after last night's "Prime Time" programme about the overruns. I will not ask him again as I have attempted to ask him before. Are we not witnessing the biggest abuse of taxpayers' money in the history of the State? Will he explain, given the international research carried out, how the Government can stand by after receiving a national roads needs study, effectively sidelining it and cooking up an ad hoc notion not to upgrade the roads, as the study from the NRA specified, but to replace them with motorways? Last night's example was Clare to Mitchelstown, with 10,000 vehicles a day, which is to get a motorway with a capacity of 55,000. Where is the financial or traffic management logic in such a plan?

How has this trick been allowed to become systematic? A bid is made at a price low enough to gain political support and when it is accepted, claims are maximised to ensure that the cost overrun is not 20%, the international average, but 86%. Will the Taoiseach explain on that basis? We are talking about cost and finance. It makes no sense from a traffic management point of view. We all know that we need roads, and the national roads needs study pointed out how they were to be provided. Will the Taoiseach explain how that was ditched and the motorway plan put in its place?

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