Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I wish to ask about legislation in the Minister for Transport's own area. I have an interesting document here, dated August 2000, in which the then Minister for Transport, Deputy Mary O'Rourke, indicated she would be establishing a Dublin transport authority and introducing competition on the bus services within Dublin. She helpfully set an indication that this legislation would be completed by late 2002. Five years later and 250,000 houses have been built, many of them with no public transport service; no additional buses were provided to Dublin bus; 300,000 additional cars were bought in the Dublin area; and our climate change targets have been completely breached. Much of this goes back to the failure of the Government to do as it said in 2000, namely, to introduce legislation to provide a framework for the proper planning and delivery of public transport in the city.

Was this performance on promised legislation one of the benchmarks used to decide that Ministers and senior civil servants in the Department of Transport warranted a massive increase in pay? Will he bring a Supplementary Estimate before the House to indicate how his Department will fund the extra pay for these public servants? Will this money be found by making cutbacks elsewhere, as we have seen in other areas where people who are very vulnerable have suffered cutbacks? What is the Minister's plan on how these two issues will be dealt with?

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