Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The proposed increase in tolls is just the latest part of a highway robbery that is being carried out by the private operators in this country. This highway robbery is facilitated by the Government and by Fianna Fáil, historically, which developed this whole notion of public private partnerships, PPP. The robbery continues apace.

The Government indicated it is going to pay to put off the toll increases. The people who use these roads will obviously welcome that. They are not going to be hit by these toll increases for six months. The Government is still handing over €12.5 million to these private companies, however. The public is still being robbed and will still pay for it but just in another form. The scandal, therefore, continues.

It is worth retracing our steps to see how we got here and how we have this system of public private partnership where the public takes all the risk and the private sector takes all the profit. We need absolutely to bring an end to it. We need to take these out of private ownership and bring them into public control.

There was a story in The Irish Timesat the weekend with a headline that read, "Who runs Ireland’s road tolls and who gets the money? International investment funds provide the money, and take the risk, for our motorway network." That is the ideology and the propaganda. It tries to suggest the private interests that run most of the toll roads ran a risk and, therefore, in some way have a legitimate expectation of getting a profit. That was the ideological basis of PPPs in this State, not just in roads but in schools and other important projects like social housing.

The truth is that, when we examine it, the private actors in the motorways ran no risks. When the Roche family and their friends in Fianna Fáil did the deal on the M50 toll road in the 1980s, there was no risk. The State built the motorway. The only remaining link that National Toll Roads, NTR, built did not leave any option for motorists to flyover or bypass the link. It was a cash cow delivered to a wealthy dynasty that set them up for generations to come. We were sold a con then. We were told that, by using private enterprise, the State would avoid funding all the costs of key infrastructure, the public would save money, in return, the private companies ran a risk that they could lose the money, and - this was the idea - we got these roads, schools and houses at a supposedly bargain price. Of course, it was a nonsense. These people were not doing it for the good of their health. They were doing it because they were very out to make a very substantial profit. That was nonsense then and it is nonsense now, and it is being used to contract out core State responsibilities and fatten the profit margins of already wealthy investors and company owners.

The twists and turns in share ownership and buyouts since the start of PPPs are part of the same process of financialisation in which key public goods have been plundered by various vested interests, again with the public picking up the tab. The justification for these increases to the effect that the contract allows for it and deferring it will mean larger increases later follows a pattern that has been repeated again and again without looking at the question of how we got here. We got here because of the hold of new liberal ideas on the Government and core actors in the State. It was presented that private sector involvement in any project was unquestionably seen as a good thing whereas the public sector was seen as inherently inefficient, unionised, backward and so on. We have the result of all this policy and we can draw a balance sheet on it. The truth is that the policy has been a disaster. It means that, when we face a cost-of-living crisis, as we do, we are told we cannot prevent hikes in tolls because of the PPPs or, in this case, we can prevent them temporarily but we have to pay for it. At key moments, PPPs and the privatisation beyond them remove the ability of the State, or certainly weaken its ability, to control costs and provide key services.

We might look at the facts of it, which suggest the private sector did not ever risk its wealth in this process. An Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, report in 2018 found that:

A striking feature of our analysis is the revelation that road PPP projects are mainly financed by the public sector. Our analysis has established that the public sector has contributed €1.01 billion in construction payments, in addition to €1.17 billion spent on land acquisition costs. Although private finance contributed over €1.8 billion of investment in the projects analysed, of this over €590 million was borrowed from the EIB which is a major lender of public funds to the private PPP companies.

The report also found that while PPPs accounted for one third of Ireland's motorway networks, the use of PPPs at that time had not been subject to any review or analysis by the State. Therefore, far from saving the State money, even in the initial building stage, PPPs in roads cost us and people continue to pay dearly via charges as well as directly subsidising the private sector. Those who gain are the operators who have been returning profits despite the slowdown during Covid 19. The M1 at Gormanstown made €8 million last year for Celtic Roads. The Portlaoise bypass made €4 million for it. The Waterford bypass made it €3 million. Eurolink made €5 million from the M4, almost €6 million from the M3 and so on. That was just in the last year.

Toll roads and PPPs are the gift that continues to give for many of Ireland's wealthiest and some of the globe's largest investment funds. We know the Roche family via National Toll Roads made a vast amount on the M50 deal. We also know, as reported in the Business Postsome years ago, that the State paid a staggering €600 million to NTR to buy out the West-Link toll bridge operation. It is estimated that NTR earned over €1.15 billion from the motorway project, which was built at a cost of around €60 million. An array of international funds, private corporations and Irish rich have made a killing from PPPs. These deals, which were presented as a good deal for the public and so on, were in reality always designed to transfer wealth from the public to very rich private operators, and they continue to fulfil that role.

The hikes which motorists face during the cost of living crisis are just the latest episode in a long-running saga of how the main political parties in this State, especially Fianna Fáil, have forced ordinary people to pay for those profits in various different ways. That continues.

One can see the situation where the companies are forced to delay their increases but they get it from the public in another way because the State simply pays them not to do it. It is a scandal. The way to bring an end to it is to take these toll roads, which have already made a very significant amount of money for their private owners,out of private ownership, to bring them into public ownership and to run them in the interests of the public.

See this speech in context