Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

The Minister stated that it would be up to the implementing agencies whether any contracts would be signed. This is the exact replica of what happened four years ago, where Fianna Fáil stated before an election that it would build a metro and six months later when the election was over, it was goodbye to the Metro. Anything he will say about public transport will have the same credibility. It is a Fianna Fáil promise before an election. If the contracts are not signed before the election, sorry, it counts for nothing.

Are the media reports true with regard to the front-loading in the roads programme, that the Department of Finance after its clever analysis of the transport scene in the past six years when they let through a €6 billion roads programme which cost €16 billion, is fighting the good valiant fight and insisting that we spend more on roads and then eventually, after 2014 or some such date, we will start building public transport? Is that general trend emerging from the Minister's detailed analysis which was meant to be completed last March?

On the funding envelope that the Minister called the global financial portfolio, if we are adopting a funding mechanism for the proposed metro which would involve, not the State funding it — Lord forbid we put a penny into public transport — but rather private finance over 20 or 30 years of the lifetime of the project the Government has proposed, how does that funding fit into the overall funding about which the Minister talks?

See this speech in context