Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

Absolutely. How could such a close relationship have come apart so quickly?

The key characteristic of the transport budget is commuters have been hammered right, left and centre through the increase in excise duty on petrol by 8 cent a litre from budget night and the increase in motor taxation of 4% on cars with an engine capacity of less than 2.5 litres and 5% for those with a higher engine capacity.

Commuters have been hammered on the one hand while, on the other, there have been cuts in the public transport investment budget. The urban parking charge, to which my colleague referred, will impinge on many workers. In many parts of the mid-Leinster region, Munster and Connacht, people must commute 40 to 60 miles because they have no choice. There is no public transport. For example, people must bring vehicles onto this campus if they are Oireachtas civil servants. They must also take their cars if they work in other public and private sector jobs based in inner city Dublin and in other cities.

The extraordinary betrayal by the Green Party of the transport budget is astonishing. More than 63% of the infrastructure budget, amounting to some €2.1 billion, has been allocated to the roads programme. While we have always supported road improvements and maintenance, in respect of which there are cuts, the Green Party is supporting a transport agenda that prioritises roads. During the years I spent in the first civic alliance with the Green Party, particularly in local government, a raison d'être of the party seemed to be to increase public transport. Some 15 months in government and the Green Party is out of touch and abandoning one of its basic creeds. As incredible as this seems and notwithstanding Deputy O'Flynn's comments, it appears the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, is more concerned with public and sustainable transport than his Green Party colleagues because of his defence of several Transport 21 projects.

The Minister listed a number of projects, including the Luas extensions, enhanced bus corridors, phase one of the western rail corridor to Athenry, the Midleton rail line, phase one of the Navan rail line and so on, but these are well under way and have been known of for some time. A number of major projects are in grave danger, for example, the interconnector that CIE and Iarnród Éireann want to build, which would transform the city via a four-line DART network. People wonder what will be the project's pace in 2009, given the level of cutbacks. Why will the interconnector and metro north not be moved ahead together?

From the briefings I have been given by officials at the Department of Transport, the real story in transport is that metro west, the Lucan Luas line F and the red and green line BX Luas link-up, which we have heard about ad nauseam from Ministers, are in grave danger or have disappeared from the agenda. In terms of other important projects, such as the Navan rail line, in which the Minister is probably interested, and the western rail corridor, we must ask whether either of these vital national projects will get past stage one.

I have corresponded and interacted considerably with Labour Party councillors in cities such as Cork, Galway and Limerick regarding light rail lines in all three. What is occurring on this front? We do not know whether the relevant feasibility studies will be completed. The projects seem to have been placed on the back burner indefinitely.

Fears concerning the total abandonment of metro west and the Lucan Luas line epitomise what the Green Party has done. I welcome the Minister for Transport's commitment on metro north last week. Despite Deputy Kennedy's comments, I have been a strong supporter of metro north because of economic and other developments. Unfortunately, the route will not pass through my constituency as I had advocated, but I am happy to see it pass through Dublin North and Dublin North-West. I hope the work to be done in 2009 will not peter out and that there will be no further harsh news in the years ahead.

Before the 2007 general election, my colleague, Deputy Shortall, called for a massive increase in the Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus fleets. We are still waiting. Since Transport 21's establishment, Dublin Bus has only received 100 additional new buses. If one wanted an accessible, reliable and speedy bus service for all city quadrants, one would need 300 to 500 new buses. I was struck by how the Minister, when discussing this issue last week, did not seem to understand how a bus company worked or how many buses needed to run at peak times to provide an efficient and reliable service. Why is the Green Party staying in government, why is there a green component in the Government and why can we not have a general election?

During the budget debate, I welcomed the new cycle to work scheme, which provides for a maximum tax exemption of €1,000 in a five-year period. Why could the Ministers for Transport and the Environment, Heritage and Local Government not embark on a wider pro-cycling initiative? The latter merely discussed a Sutton-Sandycove cycle route, which has been in the works for ten or 15 years. Local councillors in the various councils around Dublin Bay handled the issue.

The Minister, Deputy Gormley, also spoke last week about producing an electric car sector to follow the examples set by Denmark, Israel and so on. I would welcome this warmly, but the only way the Minister's carbon budget will reduce transport emissions — transport and agriculture are the two problem areas in terms of CO2 emissions — will be by plunging the country into a significant recession. There is a close relationship between rates of economic growth and percentage rates of increase or decrease in CO2 emissions. The Minister and his seven parliamentary colleagues have decided to get us in the right carbon emissions territory by bringing about a major recession. As my colleague, Deputy Tuffy, stated, nothing in the carbon budget details how anything can be done quickly about carbon emissions.

The parking levy will be problematic. Will part-time workers on the minimum wage be levied at the same rate as highly paid senior executives, as seems to be the case? If an employee does not have a dedicated car parking space but shares it with other colleagues, he or she would still face a €200 whammy. Last week, I was contacted by a couple sharing a car. Must they pay €400? As with so much else done by the Government, we are finding out the intricate and desperate conditions day by day.

The air travel tax will have an unhealthy impact on, for example, Shannon, the west and the tourism industry, an area that did not need any more taxes or hassle, given——

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