Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill as I have a number of serious concerns about it and the proposed merger of the RPA and the NRA. For a start, the Bill's Title is a concern. It is the Roads Bill, not the transport infrastructure service Bill or the transport infrastructure authority Bill. Any further attempts to promote public transport and to move away from car dependency will be hampered because the main body, the NRA, will naturally be more focused on road-based transport options rather than trying to develop the State's light and heavy rail infrastructure.

I commend the staff of both the NRA and the outgoing RPA on the work they have done for the State over the last decade or so. Inherently, however, the NRA and RPA have competing interests. In fact, both agencies have always been direct competitors and I believe their competing interests will be impossible to reconcile in a merged body. Road-based projects will surely take precedence. One need only listen to earlier contributors to the debate in that regard. In that context, there is a potential that the merger of the RPA and the NRA, as proposed under the Bill, could be in breach of the Competition Act. Did the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, even remotely consider that? Any element of competition that currently exists between public mass transport and personal car transport will now effectively be eliminated by this Government.

There is also grave concern that no new light rail projects will be realised in the medium to long term because of the horrendous bailout mortgage the country now has on its back. Indeed, many people wonder what impact this merger will have on the Luas cross-city project, despite the assurances given to us by the Minister, Deputy Varadkar. When that Minister spoke in the House to introduce this Bill he spent a great deal of time talking about reducing and eliminating quangos, which is the classic Fine Gael and troika type of tripe that he and his colleagues have given us over the last five or six years. The result will be bad for public transport in the State.

The existing functions of the RPA will transfer to the NRA, which is provided for under section 6. However, the provisions regarding the functions of the merged authority are weak. Section 16, for example, provides that additional functions may be conferred on the merged authority by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport with the consent of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. That is not a mandatory obligation on the Minister, and the functions of the merged body will be at the total discretion of the Minister in the future. Again, this provision points to the intended restriction of the merged body's functions primarily or exclusively to the road-based transport option. Section 17 relates to the potential for the Minister to request the authority to arrange for the procurement of goods and services in respect of regional and local roads, but there is no mention of light rail or other transport options. Interestingly, there is no mention of light rail in any of the provisions concerning the functions of the new authority. Perhaps the Minister of State, Deputy Alan Kelly, who has responsibility for commuter transport, will explain why there is no specific reference in this regard. I note that "transport infrastructure service" might be the name of the body after the dissolution of the RPA, but I believe the merged authority will still be referred to as the RPA.

The House must bear in mind that this Bill is being introduced against a background of savage cuts in the public service obligation, PSO, and in existing rail and road-based public transport. The National Transport Authority, NTA, recently provided me with figures on the distribution of the available subvention between Dublin Bus, Irish Rail and Bus Éireann. This was in response to a parliamentary question I tabled for the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, last January. The total PSO in 2011 was just under €265 million. That has been slashed to €209 million this year. Effectively, there has been a 20% cut in an already small PSO budget for public transport. That must be seen in the context of what happens in most other jurisdictions and in great cities such as Amsterdam.

Incidentally, the direction of this Bill and of the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, is very anti-Dublin. It is a ferocious attack on the people of the Dublin region, in particular, and is very anti-urban centres.

It is a device designed to promote the lack of public transport in the State in the future. The share of the PSO for Dublin Bus has also been slashed - from €73 million when the Government took office to €60 million in 2014. It is a disgraceful situation in which people who pretend to represent labour, trade union and public sector interests are involved in a Government that would do such a thing. The share of the PSO for Irish Rail was also slashed from €149 million in 2011 to €117 million in 2014. The share of the PSO for Bus Éireann was also slashed from €43 million in 2011 right down to €32 million in 2014. The real effects of the huge cuts to the PSO are being borne out every day in terms of poorer services provided to passengers around the country in both urban and rural areas and very difficult conditions for employees of Dublin Bus, Irish Rail and Bus Éireann.

It has been reported in recent weeks that workers in Irish Rail, Iarnród Éireann, might go on strike because of further pay cuts proposed by the company following the Labour Court’s recommendations and following the cuts in the PSO. Iarnród Éireann management is under huge pressure because of the terrible cuts to the PSO. Five or six years ago we had begun to get movement in the development of rail-based transport in this country but all of that has now been lost. We already have a public transport service creaking at the seams and we are still heavily car dependent. According to EUROSTAT figures from 2002 to 2011 the modal split of passenger transport was between 84% on car-based transport compared to the remainder on public transport.

The neoliberal agenda of the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, has always been the Fine Gael agenda. The rubbish about quangos and references to other important public service bodies and agencies shows clearly that he and Fine Gael do not believe in public transport services. His agenda is to privatise those services. We only have to look across the sea to the neighbouring jurisdiction in the United Kingdom to see what happens following the privatisation of important public transport services. It proves the old adage that the only thing worse than a public monopoly is a private monopoly. One only has to look at the bus market in the United Kingdom where companies such as Stagecoach, Arriva and FirstGroup have carved up the market between them on geographical grounds and produced lucrative regional private monopolies. One sees the same type of situation in Scotland. It is no wonder there is now strong support for the renationalisation of railway networks and operators following the disastrous performance of private sector companies.

The impact in this important area of the policies of Fine Gael and the troika are disastrous for public transport in the future. That is my concern following the elimination of the RPA. I remember, for example, the tremendous battle when Padraic White was the chairman of the RPA. He fought with the chief executive of the RPA to extend the Luas into Connolly Station to create an integrated DART-Luas network which Dublin so badly needed.

The Government has totally shelved major projects such as metro north in my constituency and metro west. Despite the necessity based on the huge economic fulcrum of Dublin Airport metro north did not proceed. We had already spent €165 million on enabling works and a further €19 million was spent on metro west. All that work has been abandoned by the Government. The Bill gives a legislative framework to the abandonment of the policy. I note that in the context of metro north the distinguished transport engineer, Cormac Rabbitte, recently gave a presentation to members of Dublin City Council based on his own detailed independent research that a project with a similar route to the one previously identified for metro north could be built for less than €2 billion. Transport planners should now examine public transport solutions for the 2025 to 2031 period for the 2 million plus people who will be living in the greater Dublin, north Leinster and Meath area, according to a recent Central Statistics Office analysis for 2031. The NTA rejected Mr. Rabbitte’s research due to the biased approach of favouring road-based transport solutions. The NTA took issue with the cost of boring machines. The reality is that it did not disprove the fundamental approach the engineer offered as a possible solution to developing quickly the kind of public transport network which the capital city and Cork city require. When I was the Minister of State, Deputy Alan Kelly’s, predecessor as spokesman on transport for the party I proposed a Luas network for the cities of Cork, Galway and Limerick. Such development has, unfortunately, now been abandoned under this short-sighted Bill. I urge the Minister to examine the Bill carefully before the Dáil finally gives approval to it. I am concerned by the Bill which is geared towards road-based transport solutions rather than public transport. It is anti-urban Ireland and it does not do what is necessary for public transport in the future in this country.

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