Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

My question concerned public transport. I would be the first to acknowledge the National Roads Authority seems to have finally got its act together. The changes by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, regarding funding procedures have helped. Not everyone wants to or can drive a car into Dublin city centre, Limerick, Cork or Galway.

If we want to do our business as a modern economy, where is the public transport? The integrated signalling for the Liffey junction line is still years away, and in taking the train from Maynooth to Connolly station, one finds the locals fondly call it "The Calcutta Express" because people are jammed on trains and there is such a lack of trains.

The Taoiseach mentioned an extra 100 buses. How many of those buses are in service and how many of those are replacements for clapped-out buses which were not replaced for about ten years? How much additional resourcing are we getting? People want to use public transport but it is impossible to do business or go to a job if reliable public transport is not available.

Where is the Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, on all this? He gave us flights of fancy on electronic voting and so on. Is he thinking away in some ivory tower? We want public transport now. Has the Taoiseach confidence in the Minister's capacity to deliver? He has already announced to my colleague, Deputy Tommy Broughan, that eight out of 12 of the public transport projects in Transport 21 have had their completion dates pushed back by at least one year. Is the Taoiseach aware of this and does he continue to have confidence in this Minister?

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