Brendan Ryan (Labour)

The issue is one of funding needed in Dublin and the rest of the country. In the national development plan the figure for investment in public transport in Limerick, Cork and Waterford was £50 million at a time when the best part of £10 billion was being committed to the greater Dublin area. I do not begrudge one penny of that £10 billion to the greater Dublin area but it was an illusion to imagine that £50 million divided into three cities would be anything more than the metaphorical drop in the ocean.

I do not understand – perhaps I do but politically one says one does not – how we waited so long to notice. How many billions did the 1997 to 2002 Government use on reducing an already low national debt? The Tánaiste plaintively told us we under-borrowed. The reason we under-borrowed was the Government decided – apart from outrageous tax cuts for the rich – to reduce the national debt instead of using some of the surplus funds generated by the extraordinary economic efficiency of the previous Government. It decided that cutting the national debt was more important. That is the reason we are now short of money. Eight projects in the National Roads Authority were ready to roll but cannot begin because the Government states it does not have the resources to fund them.

If we are to have a suitable transport system for this large urban area, we must recognise that it cannot be done on the basis of market forces. Nobody has produced a public transport system based exclusively on such forces. I am fully in favour of market testing to ensure value for money is available. The idea that one can run a public transport system which is profitable according to the normal measurement of profitability is nonsense. Until we overcome this ideological obstacle we will never have a proper public transport system in Dublin.