David Norris (Independent)

I thank my colleague, Senator O'Toole, for his generosity in sharing his time with me. I fully agree with his views on the Dublin Port tunnel. He has highlighted the crux of the matter. The tunnel was built to relieve the congestion caused by large commercial vehicles in the city centre. It would be absurd if we simply used the existence of tunnels to dislodge the worst of these commercial vehicles and those most hostile to ordinary civilian transport, if I might call it that, in the city.

There are transport problems in Dublin just as there are in many growing European cities. It is estimated, for example, that between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. each day there are 460,000 journeys in Dublin, 71% of which are by car. The vast majority of these cars have only one occupant. All public transport modes available can at their maximum stretch cater for only 30% of these journeys. That is the situation. The Luas adds life and is pretty — as Frank McDonald kept telling us — but can never offer a real solution. That is a mathematical certainty.

We have discussed this matter many times in the Seanad. Some of us formed a group to promote the metro and availed of the services of people like Garret FitzGerald, who worked out the mathematics. The Luas is simply incapable of shifting sufficient numbers. As it is on the surface, it not only has the difficulty of dislodging other services, of which we have had experience, but is relatively inflexible in terms of its capacity to increase train length and frequency. At the same time I am not a begrudger. We have Luas, so let us enjoy it. Its sophisticated appearance on the city streets is very nice for those who live along the Luas lines, few though we may be. The Luas has some unintended negative social consequences in terms of further boosting house prices along its lines.

It is true as Senator Terry says that there is no real solution on the north side of the city, which is a pity. There was a regrettable absence in the Minister's speech of any statement about Luas. I hoped he would refer to it, but there is not a single line about it in his speech. Unfortunately, I was not in the Chamber when he was speaking, as I had to be somewhere else, so I do not know if he mentioned Luas. I know that his heart is in the right place.

Some of the safety issues were glossed over and need to be examined more carefully. I warned about this kind of tram system five years ago in the House but other cities have learned to live with the safety issues and there is usually a decline in the frequency of accidents. The issue was discussed at the Joint Committee on Transport. As Senator Dooley said, the question of our culture also arises. We are all amber gamblers. People drive their vehicles not just through amber lights but through red lights if they see an opportunity. They can then be hit by the trams. Once again, a north side bias is evident. The Luas line on the north side of the city started late, has a smaller capacity than the line on the south side, is less frequent and has experienced the majority of accidents. All this helps to make the case for a proper transport system.

It is clear that the signage is inadequate to prevent accidents. One could argue that in terms of comparative signage, there are plenty of signs. Perhaps they are not designed in a sufficiently eye-catching manner. We may be suffering from what I call "sign blindness", a little like snow blindness, because there is a blizzard of signs all over the city. One cannot take them all in. Yesterday evening, I was driving two friends from Los Angeles through Dublin city and I pointed out where the Luas tracks were. They remarked that there were no signs. There may be, but they are possibly not the right signs. A very good suggestion made by the Joint Committee on Transport was that the signs should incorporate pulsing, winking lights such as those warning people at the DART level crossings. The Luas system should also involve CCTV cameras to record the registration numbers of cars driven by those who break red lights.

I am surprised there has been no accident yet in an area which involves special danger, the stretch where public service vehicles such as buses and taxis, along with private cars, share the road for a couple of hundred yards with the Luas trams. That stretch runs from Middle Abbey Street through Beresford Place to the lower end of Gardiner Street. It is quite likely that at some stage, cars will be trapped there by the traffic, and there may be a collision. This should be examined.

Senator Dooley was a little diffident about the metro. He referred to the report commissioned by the Joint Committee on Transport, which wholeheartedly endorsed the metro. The committee was informed that not only was it good value, but a necessity, and that a significant cost would result from failure to install the system. The report was unanimously adopted by the committee established by both Houses of the Oireachtas to look at transport.

Although the Minister did not mention the metro in his speech, he did mention it on a "Questions and Answers" programme a week ago, a programme on which I was a panellist. He said clearly at that time that the metro plan had not been dropped and that it remained Government policy. He contradicted those who said the Taoiseach had unilaterally torn up the metro proposal. I spoke to the Minister of State in the corridor outside this Chamber and asked if it would acceptable for me to put this on the record, and he agreed it would. That is the Government position. The Taoiseach said it is unlikely that a metro could be completed by 2007. That is a pity, but let us not allow this to wither on the vine. This is the most significant transport initiative for the city of Dublin.

As a result of initiatives in which I engaged, the committee brought Professor Melis to Dublin and visited Madrid. Unfortunately, I was not able to visit that city but I am glad other Members travelled there. Professor Melis made the points Senator Dooley iterated, namely, that the system in Madrid was facilitated by the fact that the Spanish Government controlled ground underneath the city and the planning process could be short-circuited as a result. However, he also stated that the parliaments of other cities had passed legislation. That is what we should be doing, namely, asking the Government to prepare legislation to facilitate the putting in place of a metro.

Another significant factor in the Madrid case was how the time problems were overcome. The longer a contract runs, the higher the costs involved. In Madrid there was a series of between six to ten parallel contracts which meant that the line was being worked on by a series of contractors. We should consider using a similar system. Not only is there something in our culture which encourages people to gamble with amber lights, there is also something which allows people to think that, in the interests of their companies, increasing and massaging prices is good. The prices initially reported by the Railway Procurement Agency were bizarre in the extreme. I recall a spokesperson stating on the radio that the project would cost €4.5 billion. The interviewer said that the construction costs would only amount to €1.5 billion and inquired as to what use the other €3 billion would be put. The spokesperson answered, perfectly cheerfully, that it would be used for contingencies and insurance. My attitude to that is: some contingencies, some insurance.

I forgot to welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Callely, to the House. I did not intend any discourtesy. It is only right that I should welcome a fellow northsider.