Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I should not be here tonight, and we should not be debating this motion. We should have learned from the past 40 years that public concern is a remarkably effective way of finding out what one might be well advised to avoid. I was a young person still at school when the ESB decided to knock down a large part of Fitzwilliam Street's Georgian heritage. I was an obstreperous student in college when attempts were made to destroy a large part of Hume Street's Georgian heritage; since then I have changed only my occupation, not the adjective that describes me. Attempts were made to do other things, many of which succeeded, and on every occasion, history and dispassionate analysis have shown that the objectors were right. It was a desecration of Dublin to destroy a large element of its Georgian heritage.

We have now reached the next stage. A road is desperately needed. The problem has been that for 30 years in this country the philosophy of the Department of Finance regarding infrastructure has always been that it should follow markets rather than create them. It is a fundamental philosophical difference between people such as me and those in the Department of Finance that I feel that we should use infrastructure to cause and channel development rather than wait for the development and then build infrastructure. We should have done this five, ten or 20 years ago. I have followed most of this debate either in the House or in my office. Let us not get involved in a spurious argument that somehow there is some objection over here to the construction of an efficient road network in this country. On this side of the House we have the same concerns as public opinion, namely, that the desperate rush to catch up with the mess made of our infrastructure will result in an act of archaeological vandalism.

The arguments on the choice of routes have been well rehearsed, having been made by several speakers in this House. It is undoubtedly true that no one has produced a convincing reason for this route to have been chosen ahead of an alternative route that on every environmental and heritage indicator was better. We have all had the opportunity to read the indicators, all of which suggested a different route for the sake of visual amenity and archaeological heritage. The argument has moved on. The first ignorant — I use the word in the sense of being without knowledge — response from the National Roads Authority was that the new road was further from the Hill of Tara than the existing one. Such was the level of intellectual debate with which the NRA began. Even were that argument sufficient to justify a second act of vandalism, if the area were one of precious heritage, it would have been obscene to make it simply because we did something wrong 100 years ago. Road construction at that time was less intrusive and destructive and the roads were much smaller.

This project involves a major motorway with floodlit intersections and so on. The issue underlying the debate means that somebody like me, who lives approximately 170 miles away, feels obliged to intervene. The issue does not relate to roads and it is a pity the amendment has been tabled because it ducks the issues. One could always conclude the reason for ducking the issue is because the Government is uncomfortable about it and, therefore, wants to discuss something else.