Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish a happy 95th birthday to Nelson Mandela. I have here the tributes to him when he got his honorary degree in Trinity College Dublin in 2000. Professor John Luce stated: "With all due respects, I now present to you our past century's most outstanding champion of human rights, His Excellency, Nelson Mandela." The accolade to him concludes:

You see before you a man of exceptional tenacity and outstanding magnanimity whom I think it is appropriate to salute in the old Roman fashion as the father of his country. As he inscribes his name on our Roll of Honour, see to it that the thunder of your applause re-echoes through this hall.

His proposers were two great human rights advocates, one a former Member of this House, Senator Trevor West, and Professor Kader Asmal. It is worth noting also that long before that the students named their headquarters in Trinity, when Nelson Mandela was in the Robben Island jail, as Nelson Mandela House. It is a terrific occasion for us to celebrate one of the great people of recent times.

I express my support for the Government again in dealing with banking. I base that on the Which? survey of banking, which shows that the two worst banks are Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank. Bank of Ireland has 41% approval while Ulster Bank has 45%. We all realise the immense problems these people have created for the Government, and I assure the Government that any measures to reform these awful institutions will have support from this side of the House.

Regarding Senator Mooney's comments about roads, the Leader may recall that when we discussed it with the Minister of State, Deputy O'Dowd, on a previous occasion he said he would come back with a measure to change the way in which heavy goods vehicles are taxed from the unladen weight of the vehicle to the laden weight per axle. He was not against the idea in total but I am informed by civil engineers that these inappropriately taxed commercial vehicles account for the bulk of the damage done to roads. The research is 40 or 50 years old. It is time to change the basis on which we tax commercial vehicles to reflect the fact that in times of budget constraints we wish to reward vehicles that do not damage the highways, impose the appropriate levies on those that do and hope the fleet will gradually change to ones which do not crack the road surface. A road tax system could be designed to reflect that. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Dowd, was not opposed to the idea. He said he would examine it and in view of what was presented in the transport committee yesterday and Senator Paschal Mooney's comments, it is now time to reopen the file on that. We might debate it in the new term or perhaps the Minister of State might consider it is worth doing without debate.