Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I also thank the Minister for attending this debate and for having the courtesy to stay throughout it. It would be great if he could respond to some of the important points raised.

Before I comment on this legislation, I will return to comments made by other speakers about taxation options open to the Minister and Government in respect of how we change people's behaviour in respect of the car. I am about to make an obvious point but one which must be made in tandem with any discussion of taxation. We can only make structural changes in our tax system when we make structural changes in terms of the availability of public transport.

I will revisit a point made by Senator O'Malley when she said she had a choice between taking her car or the DART. We will only be fair to people using their cars if we make a large change in the tax system and improve the availability and quality of public transport. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a more inappropriate time to make this comment at a point when 60,000 people who might look to use a bus cannot make that switch due to the current strike.

Nothing could be more important in making that happen than ensuring that all the different projects under Transport 21 happen. Reference was made to handing over responsibility for some of these areas to bodies like the unit in the Department of Transport responsible for integrated ticketing. God help us if we are going to hand over projects currently sitting in the Minister's Department to a Department which has been responsible for introducing integrated ticketing since the early 1990s and which has been the subject of two reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General when we are still no further towards making this happen.

Probably the most pervasive feeling I have had in the six weeks I have been a Member of the Houses of the Oireachtas is a sense of the number of people with far more experience than me who have stood up and asked where all the power has gone. They say that they used to be able to talk about health but that it is now the responsibility of the HSE, that they used to be able to talk about roads but that they are now the responsibility of the NRA and that they used to be able to talk about many other policy areas that have now been handed over to a different Department or, more frequently, a statutory organisation with responsibility for the implementation of policy and that it becomes very difficult to get an answer from them on important matters. As we look at issues, and the Minister has spoken about how we engage voters, particularly in local government, it ill behoves us to hand over large swathes of policy or Government revenue without a very clear idea of how we are going to deepen for the voters and citizens the accountability of expenditure and the delivery of policy decisions. As a former member of a local authority I have direct experience of this, as does the Minister. When discussing policy with officials one has more hope of receiving an answer from them if the matter is in the bailiwick of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government than if it is in that of the Department of Transport. There is a direct accountability link, no matter how weak, between local representatives and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and no link of the same strength exists between members of local government or Members of this House and the Department of Transport.

Why are we handing over €1.5 billion from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to the Department of Transport when the Minister has stated he is committed to local government reform and deepening links between voters, communities and the Department? We know how these people care about the quality of non-national road infrastructure. Why is this happening now and why is there no serious local government reform to deepen links between the voter and the local road network?