Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

NTR has been the primary beneficiary of investment in the M50. As each new section was opened, it funnelled ever more vehicles through its toll bridges. Despite spending only €38 million on those toll bridges, the company has reaped a rich reward of more than €230 million. When the Comptroller and Auditor General examined this deal in 2004, he concluded, "The cost to users by way of toll revenue is around 4.8 times the whole-life costs of the toll road including the two bridges, or around €869 million more than the cost when expressed in 2004 values". Not only was the original deal a bad one but the Government is hell bent on doing it all again.

The Government will pay €113 million to a French company to construct the new barrier-free regime and a massive €600 million to NTR to compensate it for ending the contract. Where is the compensation for motorists who have to endure unbearable congestion around the West Link toll bridge? A clause in the original contract stipulated that the bridge should not be allowed to become a source of congestion on the M50. Despite the undeniable reality that it has become a source of congestion, it appears that at no point did the Government mandate NTR to lift the toll barriers in acknowledgement that they were a major cause of traffic tailbacks.

Instead, the Government rushed headlong into this giveaway compensation package with a blank cheque book. The deal with NTR involves the taxpayer paying €1 million per week until 2020. Moreover, commuters will continue to pay a toll to use the M50. This debacle raises serious questions about the use of private sector tolls and their implications for traffic management and the protection of road users' interests. The terms of this buy-out are a costly lesson on the dangers of relinquishing control over a vital strategic element of infrastructure to private interests.

Fine Gael has a clear position on the future of tolling. We will rule out any new private tolls on our roads and insist that the State never again loses control of a major component of infrastructure. Such proposals work against the public interest. Fine Gael will ensure that all future tolls will be operated by the State and levied solely for the benefit of Irish taxpayers and motorists to maintain and operate roads. We will also mandate that there will be only one toll on any major inter-urban route. Multi-tolling in a small country is a nonsense. The State will set toll fees and use them only to regulate traffic flows, cover maintenance costs and some capital costs. Fine Gael would move immediately to a barrier-free toll facility on the M50 and rule out any plans for multi-point tolling. Fine Gael proposes a new set of contractual relationships between the State and the private sector for new roads to better service motorists and taxpayers.

The current financing system is not delivering value for money for the State, the taxpayer or the motorist. There is no justification for using expensive private money for public roads. With a growing economy and where the Government has found itself with an unexpected additional €2 billion in tax revenues, there is less need to resort to private sector finance. While there is currently no longer a rationale for private sector tolling, Fine Gael acknowledges that if the economic climate changes and State coffers need private finance back-up, extra financing options must be considered such as investment from the pensions reserve fund or increased capital borrowing and PPPs reimbursed by annual payments instead of tolls.

The Government has proved itself incapable of managing the development of many major infrastructure projects. The list of its shortcomings and inadequacies is long after ten years in office — the port tunnel, PPARS, Punchestown, marinas, e-voting, illegal nursing home charges. Never has any Government mishandled and wasted so much of taxpayers' hard-earned money so rapidly and blatantly. The M50 buy-out is no different and it is ordinary commuters and taxpayers who are bearing the brunt of that incompetence.

While I would like to deal with the other significant parts of the legislation, there is one further point regarding tolling I wish to raise. Last week, media reports indicated that the new barrier free tolling regime would not be able to toll vehicles registered outside the State. That is extremely worrying, given the high level of non-national vehicles on our roads. The legislation before the House appears to make provision for non-State registered cars to pay a toll. However, in a radio interview yesterday the Minister admitted that the State would be relying on motorists' goodwill to pay the toll.