Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleague for sharing his time with me.

In the limited time I have available I want to concentrate on a few areas of transport. We are all disgusted at the format of the Estimates which give so little information. Any debate on how money is spent is inadequately informed by the nature of the Estimates. In transport it is even more of a farce. While we have a different five-year envelope each year, the five-year envelope is not included in the Estimates and will be announced on budget day. It is farcical to discuss an Estimate that is already irrelevant.

We already know that the Shannon stopover will end in 2006. One would have thought the Minister would have used the opportunity to invest in the west and prepare the Shannon region and the west generally to avail of the open skies policy and compensate for not having the certainty of flights from this country to their traditional destinations. Lip service has been paid to the Atlantic corridor which will be extremely important to opening up the west. If Shannon Airport is to survive, it will be as a tourist destination and will need the entire western coast as its catchment area. It is even more vague than the rest of the transport plan. Not alone does it have no starting date, it does not even have a termination date which most of the other projects have at least.

It is critical to have good access to Shannon Airport from surrounding areas. The rail link in the west is to extend to Ennis. Inexplicably it will not extend to Shannon. That should have been the priority, yet we have not heard a word about it. The whole project has been postponed to 2014 which makes it laughable. For all the talk about the Government's commitment to the spatial strategy and the west, when push comes to shove not one penny is allocated.

We have all these promises to dig tunnels left, right and centre and I hope we will do so. However, in the meantime we need buses in Dublin. Clearly, the Government will not provide them this year because while the public service provision may allow for inflation, it does not allow for an increase in population or the number of buses. It clearly means they will not carry extra passengers. The Minister and the previous two Ministers with responsibility for transport have promised reform of the Transport Act 1932 in order to liberalise the bus market. When I asked the Taoiseach whether this was still Government policy, I was told he was still discussing the matter with Dublin Bus. After nine years of discussing it with Dublin Bus, will it ever take responsibility for buses? Dublin is grinding to a halt and it is not just Dubliners who are affected. People coming into the city are reporting they spend two hours on the outskirts on occasions when traffic is particularly bad. It is completely unsustainable for the population to increase by nearly 500,000 in the past ten years and only to have a handful of buses. In the past ten years we spent €150 million on QBCs and bus lanes, most of which are empty of buses. We are surrendering road space and not putting buses on it. While the population is growing apace, we have no buses. The public is at its wits end. Is it any wonder everybody must buy a car and that we have total gridlock with more time spent in cars? To say the monopolist which will not compete will decide whether we will have enough buses is like an Eddie Hobbs joke.

In my constituency we have a bus lay-by beside the Luas to bring people from surrounding areas and all the new areas that have no bus service. Thousands of new houses were built in Stepaside and people were to come down——

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