Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I support Senator Ryan's amendment. As I indicated, politicians must be involved in running the Dublin transport authority and holding it to account. The amendment is timely in the light of the proposals for a directly elected lord mayor of Dublin emanating from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. If it were to transpire that the people of Dublin elected a lord mayor with the expectation that he or she would be able to make decisions on transport and other matters on their behalf, they would discover that the lord mayor was not entitled to sit on the authority.

The reason the amendment is needed is to ensure members of local authorities — the people charged with dealing with many of the local transport issues the new authority is being established to address — have a role in decision making. I hope that if we have a directly elected lord mayor, he or she will be entitled to sit on the authority. If the lord mayor is prevented from sitting on the decision making body for transport, the power of the office of lord mayor will not be credible in the eyes of the electorate and it will not be worthwhile establishing the role of directly elected lord mayor.

On Senator Norris's amendment, while I await the Minister's response with interest, the reason it is not proposed to appoint persons from the transport bodies to the board is that the powers of these organisations are to be significantly reduced. Virtually all the major decision making powers of CIE, Irish Rail and Dublin Bus will transfer to the Dublin transport authority, which means that if the latter does not like any of the service proposals made by the transport providers, it can decide to provide the service itself.