I thank the Chairman and committee members for their invitation to attend this meeting to discuss our roads report and for giving us the opportunity to elaborate on some of the key points made therein. I will start by introducing my colleagues. Mr. Finn Lyden is managing director of SIAC Contracting, with which the committee will be familiar as it is one of the main contractors involved in delivering the roads programme. Mr. Lyden has a keen interest in the agenda for the meeting. Mr. Henry McGarvey is representing Pramerica Systems which is based in Letterkenny. He is involved primarily in the software industry, supplying back office services to the insurance industry in the United States. Mr. Bill Jones is managing director of Rockall Marine which is based in Killybegs. He is very familiar with the communications problems that can be encountered in outlying regions. He is primarily involved in the offshore shipping business, as well as having an involvement in the area of renewable energy. As members can see, the delegation reflects a broad base of industry experience. I am an official in IBEC.
With 8,000 members, IBEC is the main business organisation in Ireland. Its headquarters are located in Dublin but it also maintains a network of regional offices in counties Donegal, Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford. It also operates the Irish Business Bureau in Brussels. A significant aspect of its operation is its long-standing involvement in promoting business co-operation with Northern Ireland, particularly through the medium of the IBEC-CBI joint business council.
Balanced regional development is one of the main pillars of IBEC's policy. In its organisational strategy IBEC supports this ambition through a strong and effective regional presence.
I will now summarise the main points of our presentation which, as the Chairman said, has been circulated to committee members. In our analysis of infrastructure we first examined where Ireland was placed in terms of international benchmarks. The benchmarks for distribution infrastructure which includes roads indicate that Ireland is at the bottom of the scale and only barely ahead of Poland.
In the context of political audiences, the voter interests and priorities should be noted. The Government conducted three items of research, in 2001, 2002 and this year, on public opinion. When people were asked in this year's survey what they wanted the national development plan to address, they prioritised health care and roads. However, roads rank above health care as a voter priority if the preferences are averaged across the surveys. I emphasise that because, as a business organisation, we are often accused of being self-serving when we push the roads agenda. It is quite clear that the general public would support heavy investment in roads infrastructure.
Motorways are the preferred mode in terms of corridors that carry large amounts of traffic and where safety is a consideration. The figures before the committee were taken from the European Commission's transport handbook and show, in kilometres per million of population, the situation in various European countries. It is clear that we are starting from a low point in terms of motorway density but, if the plans revealed by the Government in Transport 21 are implemented, we will have the prospect of meeting the motorway performance of the rest of Europe by 2010 and will be well ahead of the EU 15 average. It is interesting that the UK has a low motorway density per head of population, indicating that it is not a good role model when we measure motorway performance.
While we tend to look to the rest of Europe for benchmarks, it is clear that the United States has double the motorway density of the Continent. Rail freight is often presented as an either/or choice in terms of motorways but that need not be the case. It is argued that by having better railways, fewer motorways are needed and vice versa. However, the US has achieved a modal split whereby 40% of freight is carried by rail, alongside an extensive highway and motorway network.
At present, the roll-out rate being achieved under the national development plan is less than 50 km per year. When we composed our report, we wanted to determine how that figure compares to motorway programmes in some of the main European economies. In the decades when the UK, Germany and France built the backbones of their respective motorway networks, 150 km to 300 km were being rolled out per year. To deliver at these rates, their programmes were ambitious, closely managed and well resourced. If the Government is to fulfil its ambition to build 950 km of motorway between now and the end of 2010, it needs to boost the roll-out rate from the current 50 km per year to between 100 km and 200 km. That represents a major challenge to the system because the performance to date has not been encouraging.
I do not want to be too critical of immediate history but, if the PPP toll road programme is taken as a representative sample of projects, a comparison of the construction deadline included in the NDP review in 2003 and the latest NRA projection reveals substantial slippage in the past two years. For example, as recently as 2003 we were confident that the M50 upgrade would be complete by 2008 but the deadline is now 2010.
Controversy has surrounded the M3, particularly with regard to Tara, and its prospects are uncertain. I will ask Mr. Lyden to comment on that issue, as he is the preferred bidder on the contract.