Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I have a habit of taking exception to the metropolitan focus of what is meant to be a national House of the Oireachtas. It is not only in Dublin but in every city in Ireland that severe social and economic problems are caused by traffic congestion. The greater Cork area in which I live will have a population of about 500,000 in ten years. It will have traffic problems by then which are similar to those currently experienced in Dublin. With current public policy, we will then have to take on the job of retrospectively fitting an appropriate system of public transport when it will be at its most costly to do so because those in Cork and nationally who have a say about Cork refuse to consider the idea of planning now for a 20-year timescale in terms of at least making land and other services available for future developments.

Essentially, we are building a roads service in Cork. There is no room anywhere for a light rail service. There would be great difficulty in providing QBCs in Cork without hopelessly disrupting existing traffic routes. If Dublin has learned anything about quality bus corridors it is that if they are really to make a difference they must be located on new land and should not squeeze the space available on existing roads. While it is wonderful, it is not so wonderful for the jammed up cars on the restricted road surface which was designed for perhaps one quarter of the number of cars that this city and region now has.

People should be persuaded to move from private to public transport. There is a need to provide public transport that is fast, frequent and affordable. We have the least subsidised public transport system in western Europe and expect it to meet contradictory objectives of profitability – confused with efficiency – and social and environmental service. It is easy to forget that one of the biggest arguments in favour of public transport is that per user it dramatically reduces the environmental impact.

As I agree with the motion, I did not table an amendment. I wonder where people have been for the past six years and whether they have looked at the website of the National Roads Authority. It lists six or eight major road projects which were ready to begin and where all legal, planning and other requirements had been met. The only reason they could not proceed was because there was no money available.

I do not know whether the Government believes it is the fault of the Opposition that there is no money available. As it becomes desperate, it begins to hark back to the period prior to 1997 as the cause of all its problems. At what stage do Governments stop blaming the previous regime? I suppose at this stage the British Labour Party has probably stopped or perhaps Fianna Fáil in 1973 stopped blaming the 1954 to 1957 coalition Government for the country's problems. Given the economic transformation caused by the good economic policies of the coalition Government from 1994 to 1997, from which the present Government and its predecessor benefited, it is interesting that the first Labour Party Minister for Finance in the history of the State left the economy in better shape than any other Minister for Finance ever did.