James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

When I consider transport and the Government's plans in that area, I am struck by the many similarities with the health service. This is particularly the case for the Local Government (Roads Functions) Bill, which seeks to centralise authority by taking it from councils and bringing it to the centre, where, just as happened with the HSE, it will become less transparent and even less accountable.

I will start by quoting the Taoiseach, who said at the launch of Transport 21 in November 2005, "Our ambition and plan is clear and substantial — we will build a world-class transport system for the 21st century and we will do it on time and on budget". "On time and on budget" became the Government's catchphrase. However, we will have a look to see how things are going two years on. Let us look at the original completion dates for some major projects. These include the upgrading of services on the Dublin-Cork rail route, with an intended completion date of 2006, the Portlaoise train depot, the delivery and introduction of 120 Intercity railway carriages, the M1 motorway and the M50 upgrade, which were all due for completion in 2007, and the joining of the Tallaght and Sandyford Luas lines in Dublin city centre, the opening of the new Dublin city centre railway station, the Limerick southern ring road, the Waterford city bypass, and the Galway-Athenry commuter rail service, with completion dates of 2008 and 2009. The list goes on.

Further projects include the metro west, the Cherrywood Luas extension, the Dublin-Galway inter-urban motorway, the metro west phase 2 from Clondalkin, although we do not yet have a metro west phase 1, the metro north, which is particularly interesting and to which I will return later, the completion of the interconnector and the extension of railway electrification to Balbriggan, which of course would be of huge value to the people of Dublin North.

Today the joining up of Dublin's two Luas lines remains a mirage and there is no operable date. This reflects the Government's thinking, which is not joined up. The 2008 deadlines for the Luas extensions to the Docklands and Citywest and the Cork-Midleton commuter rail service will not be met. The M3 motorway and the Navan rail link are now due for completion in 2010, not 2008. The completion date for the Limerick southern ring road has been moved from 2009 to 2010, as has that of the Waterford city bypass. All phases of the expensive metro project have seen their completion dates extended. Phase 1 of the M50 upgrade was due to be complete this year, but it has been pushed back to late 2008. It was announced last Friday that an integrated ticketing system for the capital was to be pushed back another three years and that €13 million of the €50 million budget has already been spent, with no system in sight. What can we say? There are integrated ticketing systems all over Europe. What science is involved in this? I cannot understand the delay.

The Government initially costed the Transport 21 investment programme at €34 billion. We must bear in mind the recent information that our Tánaiste and Minister for Finance has transformed a €1.8 billion surplus into a €800 million deficit. That is a three-card trick that results in a loss of €2.6 million. Some people would say it was a monumental mess, while others would say it was the result of a cowardly cover-up coming up to the election. Critically, the Government nearly always refuses to provide detailed costings on projects as it claims that the release of such sensitive commercial information is anti-competitive. However, we do know that the cost of the roads programme under the last national development plan went from €5.6 billion to €12 billion, and it still is not finished.

The cost of Dublin's M50 motorway, which was completed in June 2005 after 17 years of construction, increased almost ninefold from the first phase to the last. The first phase, on which construction began in 1988, cost €6.8 million per kilometre to complete. In contrast, the final phase has cost €60 million per kilometre. Already, as thousands of motorists suffer in the car park that is the M50 due to current roadworks, we are informed that we will be back in the same position in another ten years, with just one extra lane. Again, there has been no forward planning. We desperately need to budget for and build an outer orbital route north of Balbriggan. We need this even if the proposed Bremore port does not go ahead, but if it does, Balbriggan faces disaster. The people of Balbriggan must already cope with poor infrastructure in terms of schools, policing and transport, with no electrification of the train, not enough car spaces and a bus service that is very good on the north side of the town, as it brings people to the train station, but does not operate on the south side. This does not make sense. I cannot understand why a proper system has not been put in place as it has been proven to work.

The initial cost of the Dublin Port tunnel was €535 million and it came in some €200 million over budget. Now, although the people of Swords paid dearly for it, the Xpresso 41 bus route from Swords cannot use it. It is prevented from going through the tunnel. The building of 17 km of metro north line was put at €4.58 billion in 2004. With construction inflation and additional expenditure, the cost would now be well over €5 billion. The price tag for the city's first metro line makes it by far the most expensive infrastructure project in the history of the State, at least three times more costly than the M50, which cost €1.6 billion apart from upgrade works, and six times more expensive than either the two Luas lines or the Dublin Port tunnel. In Madrid the Metro was completed in a fraction of the time and all for the cost of €1.2 billion.

The metro north project is one I hold dear to my heart. It is a worthy project and is badly needed by Dublin North. It was promised by this Government before the 2002 election and again before the 2007 election, but it does not seem to be any nearer than before. At least we have a proposed route, but that may also change. The people of Swords and Dublin North only see more houses going up and longer traffic jams during their daily commute. Dublin North badly needs the metro due to its explosive growth, with Swords the fastest growing town in Europe and Balbriggan not far behind it. We need transport to get people to and from work.

The current lack of Dart services in Balbriggan is causing serious hardship to commuters. Trains are full when they reach Balbriggan so people must stand all the way from Balbriggan into town. People — pregnant women and others — are fainting due to standing room only and of course the problem gets worse as the train moves through Skerries and on to Rush, Lusk and Donabate.

There are DART stations at Malahide and at Portmarnock but these, like all the other stations, do not have sufficient car parking and Nipper buses to bring people to the trains. There is no co-ordination between the current bus service and train times. Therefore, people either are late for the train or when they get off the train from work tired in the evenings the bus has just left. I have called for Nipper buses to be put in place which would tour the villages and towns. In the smaller villages, they could be in the square to bring people to the train on time and in comfort. That would have three benefits. It would increase the use of public transport, reduce the number of cars on the roads and take pressure off the limited spaces in the car parks.

After its troubled start the Government recently announced it was in the process of hiring communications consultants to operate a communications programme for transport projects. This sounds familiar. Once again, instead of delivering service, all they want to do is spend money on spin. The similarities between this and the current Health Service Executive are becoming more worrying. In both instances there are Ministers who did not know what was going on in the Departments, in both instances letters were not received and in both instances we are rapidly facing a mess, although the crisis in the health services is currently far greater than the crisis in transport.

I have not even mentioned the impact on the environment caused by all these cars sitting in traffic jams. There are bus corridors lying empty which we pay millions of euro to maintain and we have not supplied the promised extra buses. Some 200 buses were promised to Dublin Bus and it has not got them.

Even now, before the metro begins, there is no connectivity planned for the metro to join with the northern rail line and provide a complete service.

There was a call in the past for a six-lane motorway coming from the Lissenhall interchange so that we can accommodate the explosion in activity that will take place with the placement there of the enormous distribution centres of both Tesco and Dunnes Stores. We need to reinstate the greater Dublin transport authority, as proposed by the late Deputy Jim Mitchell, which would play a co-ordinated role in all of this.

The Local Government (Roads Functions) Bill 2007 seeks to centralise further the authority over roads. We on this side of the House oppose it because it further undermines democracy and, like the invention of the HSE, could lead to a further lack of transparency and less accountability.

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