Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I am proud to support a Government, including this Government and its predecessor from 1997, which, on a sustained basis, is putting so much investment into transport, including public transport. That was not the case in the past. Senator Browne referred to lack of foresight. In the 19 point programme put forward by Fine Gael and the Labour Party at the start of the 1997 election, one will not find any mention of transport or infrastructure.

If one looks at the Book of Estimates one will see there was no Exchequer money for public transport, although there was some European Union money. That situation has been totally transformed and much of the credit for that goes to our Leader, Senator O'Rourke, when she was the Minister for Public Enterprise with responsibility for transport. She will go down in the history books as having pioneered the rail safety programme which is vital to the maintenance of the network. I give credit also to the current Minister and the public is giving him credit also, as shown by the opinion polls, for his energy, commitment and application to the problems involved.

The quality bus corridors are excellent. I have used the ones on the Stillorgan road and the buses arrive very regularly, but their limitation is that they are a road-based solution competing with other road space. The QBCs are definitely part of the solution for a long time to come.

Huge capacity improvements are taking place currently including the DART, the Luas and so on. Much of the Opposition motion appears to be taken up with complaining that we are breaking eggs while making the omelette. Inevitably, there will be disruption but an enormous amount of work is under way and we are seeing the fruits of it. For example, the M1 to Dundalk is terrific and it is something that is actually complete. While it is correct that many projects are not joined up at present, they will be much more joined up in three or four years' time.

I am a great believer in the Luas. It will be a marvellous facility when it is opened. I hope that coming up to the Red Cow roundabout, for example, people will find a station or stop to leave their cars and come into town by public transport and pick up their cars at the end of the day. There are problems at the Red Cow roundabout and they have nothing to do with the Luas. The problem is that we do not have enough experience of trams. In a city like Vienna, trams go through some of the main streets, wait for the lights and so on. There is no extra disruption involved.