The Minister has indicated his opposition to this amendment on the grounds that it is redundant or that it can be handled properly by the existing draft legislation and in the final analysis he would rely on the good sense of the local authorities himself anyway. He failed to point out that he would be monitoring the good sense of the local authorities and deciding whether their good sense met his definition of good sense, so that he would have to approve the toll scheme finally.
I would like to hear him express his views on two things that give me some concern. Suppose that the local authority display eminent good sense by deciding that they are going to exploit this position between one centre of population, that is, Cork and another centre of population, that is, Dublin, and by virtue of the fact that it happens to be located in the national primary route system they submit a toll scheme for improving that road in part and incorporating a substantial part of the existing public road. The House will recall that we have established clearly that an existing public road can be designated as a toll road for the purposes of this Bill.
Leaving aside the question of Ministerial approval, unless the purpose of this legislation is to enable the cost of construction and provision of toll roads to be collected from tolls alone, we will be doing a bad day's work. The intent in Deputy Fitzpatrick's amendment is to make that principle fairly clear. One can only argue the case in abstract because we are dealing with a matter that the Minister has insisted on maintaining abstract throughout this debate. Let us take the extreme example of a local authority who, for whatever reason, decide that they will charge tolls on a continuing basis on a stretch of road improvement which would include part of the existing public road and part of the new facility which they would build. They would use that facility to finance other road activities in the area.
It is not clear in the legislation and in the matters to which this amendment refers and which would become part of the total section, what the constraints would be other than that the Minister would have the right to approve or sanction. With all due respect to him, the Minister has been extremely unforthcoming in indicating any Government policy in this regard other than that he wants to facilitate local authorities in responding to the private sector. That is the first question raised by this amendment.
Is it clearly established now in this House by the Minister, and will he write into the regulations which arise out of section 8 of this Bill, that a toll road facility cannot be used to generate current income after the capital costs have been reasonably defrayed? In "capital costs" I would include any risk or profit element that might have been provided. That is at the base of the amendment put forward by Deputy Fitzpatrick. It is only reasonable, if the Minister has a view on this, that he should indicate it to the House.