Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)

The public does not need to be convinced about good ideas. If something is good there is no need to advertise it. I hope we will not spend a fortune on branding the new authority and spending more money on advertising to change it every couple of years. If we are to have branding I suggest we let schools come up with ideas and involve young people in the process. That would save us money and get young people involved in politics and let them see how things happen.

It is suggested two county managers will be involved in the authority. I am not convinced that will work. The county manager of each county or a nominated individual from each county should be on the board of the authority. That would ensure each county is fully clued in to what is going on and what are the plans. It would also obviate the need to have further meetings when those concerned are involved at every stage of the decision making process. The authority is not just for Dublin, it includes all the counties in the greater Dublin region. Bad planning has resulted in many areas in the region missing out. They have suffered due to bad planning and a lack of an integrated approach in terms of transport planning.

One of the first tasks of the new authority should be to review the spatial strategy. That spatial strategy completely ignored the greater Dublin region, which was a mistake. Likewise the Government's decentralisation plan did not take into account the greater Dublin region. We should be using those outer counties of Louth, Meath, Wicklow, Kildare and so on as a springboard from the capital city to the other areas. In addition to gateways and hubs, we need another level to link them together. That should be the middle linking city to the other regions. We missed that opportunity. The national spatial strategy, which is rarely discussed here, hardly mentions the greater Dublin region, which is a pity. While this is a transport authority, it will do much more than that. It needs to get involved in that aspect to ensure money gets allocated in future.

I hope this authority will bring about many simple changes as well as big changes. Simple things like integrated ticketing should have been introduced a long time ago. I say it is simple because we are handing the power over to the authority as if it will be simple, but it is not. There will be big problems from the unions. I believe the Minister is looking forward to getting rid of this problem and handing it over to the authority. I ask the unions to show some responsibility and commitment to public service on this issue. We need to have proper integrated systems of ticketing, traffic control and moving of traffic between trains and buses and so on. They are not in competition with each other. All their jobs are safe. Let us get it together and make it work for the sake of the country.

I hope we will be able to learn from other European cities that seem to get it right. Regardless of how busy those cities are, there is a sense of tranquillity about them. In this city and around us in the greater Dublin region it is always stress and panic as a result of traffic problems. The authority will have a big job. It can be simply done if it brings in some simple measures along the way, for example changing traffic lights at night-time. It is not all rocket science and big projects. Many little ideas can be implemented, but I will not go through them now because I hope we will get the chance to do so on Committee Stage. There are many small things an authority like this can do if it is given the real power to do it.

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