Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

Recently, I suggested that the Joint Committee on Transport be given a strong invigilation role in respect of the new road safety strategy. The same process should apply to Transport 21. I will welcome the Minister's comments in that regard.

A key Government failure that has contributed to slippages and blockages in Transport 21, especially regarding the greater Dublin area, has been the ongoing fiasco surrounding the establishment of the Dublin transport authority. At the outset, the organisation was mooted as being Transport 21's key driver in many issues such as integrated ticketing and the green and red Luas link-up, but the plethora of transport bodies involved made implementing and co-ordinating policy proposals difficult sometimes.

In November 2006, the Government appointed the DTA team, which published a wide-ranging report on the DTA's recommended structures and establishment progress. The team was led by the eminent head of the department of civil, structural and environmental engineering at Trinity College, Professor Margaret O'Mahony. We believed that the Dublin and mid-east regions were to have an effective driver of transportation change at last, but we are no clearer two years on about the composition of the DTA, when it will be operational and what its role will be.

From speaking with different stakeholders since becoming my party's spokesperson, it is clear that no one in the transport sector is any wiser as to the Government's plans for the organisation's establishment. Since the group's report, the Government seems to have changed its mind. That a Minister announced the establishment of a major new agency, but floundered around for years until the Government changed its mind and rolled back is extraordinary. In the process, the previous Minister, Deputy Cullen, lost the group's head.

The Minister must explain to the House his plans for the development of the DTA. When will he introduce legislation, what will the DTA's role be and what will happen to the Dublin Transportation Office and the Railway Procurement Agency? There was considerable unease in the RPA when the DTA idea was pushed forward. Under the chairmanship of Mr. Padraic White, the agency delivered the two Luas lines on time. It got the Government — I was about to say "you guys on the Government benches" — through the 2002 election by putting a rail car outside Dáil Éireann. The Ceann Comhairle may remember that as he was probably photographed there.

See this speech in context