Dan Boyle (Green Party)

That type of transport planning which has bedevilled us over generations has always been, if the House will pardon the pun, the wrong road to go down.

There is no need to question the fact that one of the most advanced inventions of the 20th century was the private motor car. The freedom it gave to people changed the nature of society. However, that freedom has come with a price. It has meant using a scarce and diminishing resource that has environmental consequences. Any society that wants to get people from A to B in the quickest possible time must have a proper balance between access to the private motor car and public transport.

I spoke at a conference in Berlin recently, which is not a city I get to go to very often, but it was a pleasant experience. I spoke on a Friday morning and had the rest of the weekend to potter around. I bought a daily travel ticket for the city of Berlin and locations up to 20 km outside it, which cost me €6.50. With that ticket I could travel on the suburban rail, the S-bahn, the underground, the U-bahn, the trams and the buses. Berlin is a city of 3.5 million people and there are obviously economies of scale at play but if we consider ourselves to be an advanced country, one of the wealthiest in the world, then we must ask ourselves why not.

It is obvious that Transport 21 is the first attempt at putting in place an integrated approach to transport planning. In our press conference yesterday, we mentioned the fact that spending between the years 2002 and 2006 was three times greater on roads than on public transport, which was totally the wrong approach. The balance in the Transport 21 envelope is €18 billion for road transport and €14 billion for public transport, which is far better than the previous position. We will never have sustainable transport provision, however, until that gap is bridged or even surpassed.

From the Green Party's point of view, yesterday's press conference was to highlight a submission we made on the sustainable transport and travel action plan, which is a useful consultation process. It examines Transport 21, its priorities and how it will be implemented into the future. The programme for Government is quite emphatic in providing that Transport 21 will be implemented. The projects have been identified and they are being put in place.

On the roads side, lessons of the past have been learned in terms of many projects coming in under budget and on time. That has not always been the case.