Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

Something like that would frighten the life out of anyone. The Minister, Deputy Cullen, who had the e-voting debacle under his belt along with another, was being awarded €36 billion of lolly. What happened to that money and where does this plan fit in to Transport 21, or catch 21 as it is turning out to be? In my part of the country the Cork commuter rail service to Midleton has been pushed back to 2009. The flyovers at the Sarsfield Road and Bishopstown roundabouts appear to have disappeared off the map. The local authorities have been given permission to survey the area but there does not appear to be any level of joined up thinking. If one was building a house in the manner in which we do road development here we would get a loan from the credit union for the back door, get another loan some weeks later for some blocks and another one later on for cement. There does not appear to be any overall project management plan, and the Kinsale Road roundabout is a case in point. That project worked successfully but it is now hampered because the continuation projects are not in place. Where is the joined up thinking in this transfer of functions for road works to the Department of Transport?

On another matter, the park and ride issue requires local authorities and Bus Éireann to work out plans. Does that now become an issue for the Department of Transport also? I am not sure whether this transfer of functions should be viewed as a capitulation by the Minister's Department but an empire appears to be growing in the Department of Transport which is worrying and undermines to some extent the idea of subsidiarity and local government.

The purpose of the Bill, to which the Labour Party will table some minor amendments on Committee Stage, is something that affects people on a day to day basis. When people who work hard all week come out at 7 o'clock in the morning to face a day's work and drop their children to school or child care, they need some sort of infrastructural development around their community. They do not want to travel on boreens and roadways that are out of date, so to speak. Improvement in these roadways has not been delivered to date. The Transport 21 concept now appears to be pie in the sky.

I hope that as a result of this Bill, and I am not sure if it will happen, the National Roads Authority, the Minister for Transport, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and local authorities will operate in a joined up fashion in terms of developments and that the roadways in those developments will add to the quality of people's lives. If that is to be an objective of the Bill, the Minister will have the support of the Labour Party but at this stage there are many doubts undermining it which we will address when we examine the Bill in detail.

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