Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

It is important to put a number of things in context. Local governments are in crisis regarding funding. Small, medium and large car dealerships are in crisis. I visited three car dealerships in Cork city last Monday. There was no one in them, no one was buying or trading and the dealerships were looking for customers to purchase cars.

Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy John Gormley, and his Government colleagues did untold damage to the car industry in their budgets. I appeal to the Minister of State to negotiate with his colleagues in Government and come up with a stimulus package or scrappage scheme to help the car industry and the hard-pressed consumer. Senator Glynn, I believe, and others mentioned trading in second-hand cars. We need a rescue package for the car industry in Ireland. We hear the Government is becoming concerned about CO2 emissions and the reduction of our carbon footprint, but a balance must be struck.

We have a Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government who is giving with one hand and taking with the other. The Minister of State has spent a long time in politics. The reality is that under this Government there has been a reduction in funding to local government. That is a hard fact. This week Cork City Council passed its budget, as did Cork County Council and other councils. They are struggling to balance budgets, maintain services and continue to provide employment at a time when Government has let them down.

We then have this great green mantra about public transport. Every one of us is in favour of public transport which is effective, modern, environmentally clean and provides a service to people. One of the greatest mistakes made in Cork city was getting rid of the tram service. We had the first and second Lutz development plans and the Cork area strategic plan. We have had exponential growth in metropolitan Cork.

Let us paint a picture of a family of a mother, a father and three children getting up at 7 o'clock on a school morning to get out the door at 8 o'clock, get ahead of the traffic and go one mile to reach school for 9 o'clock. We have invested millions in bus lanes which are going nowhere in Cork city. They are white elephants. Gardaí patrol them at 9 o'clock in the morning, pulling people in, and awarding penalty points, and yet there is more congestion. Despite this, the Government increased the fee for public transport in schools, as Deputy Frank Feighan, Fine Gael spokesperson on school transport has consistently pointed out. The fee for two children going to school has risen from €198 to €600, as Deputy Feighan pointed out in a debate in the other House. Where is the incentive to use public transport? Where is the incentive in Cork city to get children to take the bicycle or to walk to school? There is no vision. There is a green mantra about all this, but there is nothing happening.

All across Cork, in Grange, Rochestown, Bishopstown, Togher, Glasheen and Carrigaline, I see endless queues of traffic when there would be no need for it if we had a proper transportation system. I call on the Minister of State and his colleagues to set in place a system of light rail for Cork city and metropolitan Cork. Traffic gridlock can be freed up and sustainable communities can be created in the heart of Cork. We can free up communities and have free movement, as opposed to gridlock. That has not happened.

I welcome the new addition to the Cork to Dublin motorway. Why is it that the NRA, a body that is unaccountable to this House and the other House, can plan a road with no rest area or motorway service stop? I can now drive from Cashel to Abbeyleix with no service stop and from Cork to Mitchelstown and from Kilbeheny onwards with no service stop. That is unacceptable. We need light rail for Cork and we need the NRA to become an accountable body so that we can ask about the lack of a flyover at the Sarsfield Road roundabout and at the Bandon Road roundabout in Cork city, or about the lack of rest areas on the motorway.