Pat Gallagher (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Members who contributed to this important debate. As in the Dáil, the contributions were lively and wide-ranging. While many of them were outside my remit in this regard, I will try to deal with them as best I can.

The contributions are a fair reflection of the Bill. Some Members who are opposed to the legislation strayed quite a bit away from it. I am not infringing on the Chair's right to advise them of that, but their contributions strayed into the area of health and other taxes. We are discussing only non-national roads. I believe that everybody is relatively happy with the allocations.

This debate brings back memories of the past and the allocations made in those times. Given the ultimate use to which motor tax will be put by local authorities, it is inevitable that the debate would range across a wide spectrum. It is worth repeating that the purpose of the Bill is to ensure that local authorities have the necessary resources to continue to provide good quality services to the public across a range of areas and to retain the same record level of investment in non-national roads. Perhaps we have been the victims of our own success.

The allocation by the Department in 1997 – Members will realise why I take that as the base year – for non-national roads of £214 million is in sharp contrast to the allocation last year and this year's record allocation of €434 million. If we were to link that to the 1998 Act, which introduced the local government fund and the necessity to increase our contribution towards it for non-national roads due to inflation, we have exceeded the 1997 allocation by €204 million this year.