Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I do not know whether that leaves the Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, hanging on one of his virtual gantries and the Taoiseach is backing off or whether the Taoiseach is, as usual, playing with language. What he actually said was that no decision has been taken about the location of new tolls. I have been raising this question, as have other colleagues in this House, for more than five years and now the Taoiseach informs me that although the Minister went on television on Friday night and his staff briefed all the newspapers for Saturday, no decision has been made. What exactly is going on? Why would one need to embark on a new traffic study if one was not planning new tolls? Does any Minister in the Cabinet need to be told about the traffic congestion on the M50? The Government proposes to impose three or four new tolls on that congested road. This is absolutely daft.

Where does the Taoiseach's statement about the NRA pulling out of the negotiations leave us, having regard to the watertight contract NTR appears to have? Where do we proceed from here? What about the two years when the initial refurbishment takes place and the grade separations are installed? The situation will get immensely worse as a result of the traffic coming out of the port tunnel and the Taoiseach says that there is no immediate prospect of any alleviation for the long-suffering motorist. As I understand it, far from the Government being involved in detailed discussions about the future, it was only after the row at the Committee of Public Accounts that there was any serious engagement on the side of the State, either from the Department or the National Roads Authority.

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