James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I will truncate my contribution to allow Deputy Sheehan to speak. I was delayed at a parliamentary party meeting. I will be brief. I congratulate the Ceann Comhairle officially on his recent appointment.

The obvious purpose of this motion is to ensure that there is greater accountability on the part of the National Roads Authority and the various elements of the CIE Group, including Bus Éireann, Iarnród Éireann and Dublin Bus. This motion is timely and essential at a time when we are spending so much money on infrastructure. My party colleague, Deputy Fergus O'Dowd has informed me that €6.23 billion has been spent by CIE since 1997 and €13 billion has been spent by the NRA since 2000. I do not suggest that we should not spend so much money on infrastructure - of course we should. We have to be able to assure ourselves and the public that we are getting value for money, but we are not in a position to do so.

The three key principles that underpin everything we do in Fine Gael are transparency, accountability and fairness. One cannot get fairness if one does not have accountability. One cannot get accountability without transparency. We do not have sufficient transparency - that is what is wrong - and therefore these organisations are not as accountable as they should be. The recent collapse of the railway viaduct at Malahide Estuary, which could have cost 1,100 lives, is a case in point. It would have been the greatest disaster in Irish history if it had not been for the quick thinking of the driver who saw the changes in the water and alerted others that something was seriously wrong. We have been told by sea scouts that an inspection took place after they reported changes months earlier. I sat in on a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport with Deputy O'Dowd and it took us two hours to extract a bit of information as to the type of inspection that was done. It was done looking down over the bridge as far as I can make out because the gentleman concerned did not go down in a boat and did not get down and look at the pier. I am afraid that is not something that imbues confidence in the people. Tonight I call on Iarnród Éireann to ensure its inspections are more thorough than that and I have some proposals to make at the end. The point about this is that if we do not have its representatives in here frequently enough and there is not a proper direct reporting mechanism we will not get the reassurances that we need to reassure the public. In the future there should be regular examinations, the nature of which are described, including whether it is underwater or overwater, that details of these inspections are posted on the web and arrangements are made to notify the local authority. It is more than just the viaduct in Malahide involved here; there are others around the country.

Arising from this we have seen how Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann can rise to the occasion by putting on additional buses that go directly from Skerries, Rush and Lusk, Balbriggan and Donabate into Dublin, the 33X, 33D and the 101X. This has been so successful that following representations from me and others, Dublin Bus agreed to continue the service. However, we received notification tonight from Barry Kenny that it will be for a very short period. It is very clear that the trains are chock-a-block when they get closer to town and that this service which has proven to be so successful and well subscribed should remain, not in its entirety but in a slightly slimmed-down version and certainly should not be withdrawn. I am deeply concerned as are the people of Dublin North to hear that some wags in their ivory towers in the Department of Transport are talking about discontinuing this service. I wonder if any of them has ever actually taken the train or bus into town from the north side. If they did they would know exactly what we are talking about.

This brings me to the port tunnel and its safety. I wonder if that influenced them in some way. Deputy O'Dowd has informed me that there is a worrying report that we have not seen in full as yet.

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