Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Taoiseach just does not get it. The agony of the M50 cannot go on as at present for another two years. If a warlord in the Hindukush controlled a vital pass and fleeced the unfortunate peasants who had to pass through it every day for their livelihood, some people would say, "That is Afghanistan; it is the dark ages". Does it not defy belief that in the capital city of the Ireland of 2006, every day tens of thousands of working people making their way to work are held to ransom because they have to cross the River Liffey, control of which has been given to a private company? Many working people with no public transport options sit unnecessarily in cars for two hours a day every day just to get to work. To illustrate that with a simple calculation, if that went on for 20 years, they would spend an entire year and a month camped on the M50. Put another way, that is the equivalent of three years and three months working an eight hour day. We have 700 metres of privately owned road and a bridge with 40 kilometres of a super highway on either side of it financed to the tune of €1 billion by the taxpayer that acts to funnel the same taxpayers, tens of thousands of them, into the jaws of National Toll Roads to be robbed every day. The Taoiseach is proposing to extend this medieval anachronism, which jails thousands of people daily and fines them at the same time, for another two years.

My research showed that the first we heard of tolls was in Greek mythology. There was a boatman called Charon who charged a penny to ferry the shades of the dead across the River Acheron so they could get to the afterlife. That gentleman could tout for business on the Westlink because by the time the unfortunate motorists reach the bridge, they resemble the shades of the dead in every way from frustration, anger and exhaustion.

I do not accept the constraints put on the Government by the manoeuvrings of dubious politicians and bureaucrats in a previous period. It is time to nationalise the M50 and to get this anachronism off the backs of working people, not just for Dublin but for the whole country, and to do it immediately. Let us get rid of this incredible farce. The Taoiseach just does not understand what working people must endure on a daily basis just to get to work.

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