Before moving the adjournment of the debate I had reached section 43. Lest I get myself into trouble with the Chair I wish to say something about protected roads, the title this section bears. I find this to be a very curious kind of animal. I looked at the former Minister's introductory remarks on Second Stage to ascertain what he had in mind by the term "protected roads" and I found the following remarks in the Official Report of 27 November last, at column 1310-11:
.... the concept of a protected road is being introduced in addition to the re-enactment of legislative provisions for motorways and busways. The protected road is intended as a "halfway house" between an ordinary public road, which has very limited access control or traffic restrictions, and a motorway, to which all access from adjoining lands is prohibited....
I wonder why there is need for this kind of "halfway house" between an ordinary public road and a motorway. For example, am I to conclude that a dual carriageway is a protected road? To cite the one I know best, is the Naas dual carriageway to be regarded as a protected road? Is there any particular significance in identifying that class so that the various conditions that are set out in subsections (2) and (3) of this Bill can be applied to it? I may be wrong, but as far as I know the conditions set out in subsections (2) and (3) do not actually apply today to the Naas dual carriageway. Perhaps some of them should, and if it is proposed that they should, then I would like to know.
I must say the concept of a protected road is a nice little exercise in language. I wonder what other kinds of protections may be envisaged. When I was speaking earlier about motorways I omitted to mention that I would hope that the Minister and his Department and the proposed new roads Authority would pay particular attention to the need for fencing motorways. I gather that the Ceann Comhairle has allowed my colleague, Deputy Allen, to talk to the Minister this evening about the problems of wandering horses. I myself had an encounter with a wandering horse one night some years ago. Luckily I did not suffer any damage. However, I was Minister for Finance at the time and the State had to put a new roof on the car. Indeed, shortly after we had hit the horse and killed it, another driver, a lady this time, ran straight over it and injured herself, not too badly, but she was extremely stunned. However, it was a wandering horse on the Naas dual carriageway at night. It caused mayhem for a while and luckily no one was killed in that incident.
The same problem arises with the stretch of dual carriageway that now goes across the Curragh where Kildare County Council have done an extremely effective job of fencing and putting grids on the access roads to that carriageway. However, from time to time fences get broken and sheep wander onto the roads, and that is extremely dangerous. That is an aspect of motorway planning that should receive very close attention. Our motorways should be protected roads in a sense different from that envisaged in the Bill.
In section 44 there is provision for all kinds of prohibitions and restrictions of access and so on. It is provided in subsection (1) (c) that planning permission or a decision to grant planning permission shall not be regarded as having been given for any development of land where such development would affect materially the exercise by the road authority of the rights proposed to be compulsorily acquired in relation to land under a scheme made by a road authority under section 45 of the Bill. That seems to envisage the kind of case that we saw for so many years in the Clanbrassil Street area of Dublin where all development was stopped because there was a road plan by the local roads authority which they intended to get around to at some stage, and since development was stopped the area generally decayed. This has changed quite a lot in recent times but I would hope that our National Roads Authority would not act under this subsection in a way that would replicate that kind of problem to any great extent around the country.
Again it comes back to both the financial planning framework that we have for road projects and to how they are phased and how they are proceeded with because it is extremely bad that we should have either uncertainty or a freeze on activity for a long period. It would be dangerous and totally undesirable to have a situation all around the country where development was frozen for a long period in the expectation of a road project coming on-stream and finding that that road project did not go ahead for many years. We should not encourage such as a situation but should prevent it as far as possible.
Again, there are interferences which are provided for in section 45 in respect of various planning permissions. I find another concept in subsection (4) (c) (1) that is a little difficult for me to seize. It speaks of planning permissions proposed to be revoked or modified under a scheme made under this section and the extent of such revocation or modification. I can understand the concept of the extent of a modification but I am not sure that I can understand the concept of the extent of a revocation. It seems that something is either revoked or it is not. If it is revoked in part, then it is modified.
However, I wonder are there degrees of revocation that the Minister and his Department envisage.
You will be delighted to hear, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, that there is a whole swathe of sections here about which I do not propose to say anything because I think they are rather well drafted. They have to do with the holding of public inquiries, environmental impact statements and environmental impact assessments. The only question I have, Sir — and I referred to it earlier — is why do we have this procedure for road plans and developments by public authorities generally when we have a totally different system for developments by private agencies? It seems that this system may be unnecessarily cumbersome, and although it is not peculiar to what is being provided for in this Bill, this Bill does give us an opportunity to look at it. I would like the Minister to take a little time to outline for us what he believes the advantages of this procedure are over the normal planning procedure that the rest of the world and the private sector generally have to go through.
Section 51 deals with the control of works by a State authority and so on. I have only one small quibble with that. I find that in subsection (2) (c) it is provided that the Authority or the Minister may, at their or his discretion, cause an oral hearing to be heard. Oral hearings have a very important part to play in all of this procedure because they provide the only forum in which members of the public can feel that they are directly involved in the process. I know there are entitlements built into this Bill for objection or representation, although I have asked the Minister to specify for us who may object. Oral hearings have a particular place in the process because they provide the only opportunity for the ordinary public to be involved in a way they can appreciate. I am not suggesting that I want oral hearings about every single objection, but there are a great many cases where I believe an oral hearing could help to clear the air, allay fears and remove objections.
My question is, are there any guidelines as to the exercise of this discretion by the Minister or by the Authority, or is it to be another one of all these decisions that are made by the Minister with his advisers without ever having to account for the reasons to anybody else? I do not ask the question in a hostile way but I would like the Minister to indicate if there are any practices or guidelines. I would like him to indicate also if he would consider, as a general rule, leaning more favourably towards the idea of having oral hearings, especially for the bigger cases. I know that in all the motorway cases where an inquiry has to be held there is public involvement, although I think it would be fair to say that many people feel those inquiries do not make much difference. This view may be mistaken in many cases but it is the popular view. That is not the matter we have to talk about now. However, a more frequent use of the oral hearing procedure would help to inform the public and assure the public that their concerns are being taken into account. Since the Taoiseach has recently said he wants to have a more open form of Government, it is a sentiment and an aspiration that could usefully be brought into legislation of this kind.
Section 52 deals with the provision of service areas to motorways and protected roads. I should like to ask a question about planning principles. Are there any guidelines as to the frequency of service areas on motorways or on protected roads? I know there are fairly strong guidelines regarding the number of junctions and the number of access and entry points. I gather that the general practice is that they should be at least eight kilometres apart. Are there any guidelines of that kind in relation to the provision of service areas? It is not, perhaps, so much a problem in this country as it may be in others. I am sure the Minister has had the experience of driving long distances on motorways in continental Europe and there are times when the pressure of events gets to the point where one wishes there was a service area nearby for one reason or another. There appears to be fairly liberal provisions in most of the member states of the Community in relation to the frequency of service areas. Are there any such guidelines here?
There is a provision here also that allows a road authority, with the consent of the Minister, to provide or operate service areas. Is that a new power which is being given under the terms of this Bill, or does it already exist? I do not have any position on principle on it. If a road authority feel they can make some money out of running a service area then the best of luck to them. I am sure there will be the usual arguments from people in the private sector. I suppose on the whole we could expect this is a power that would be very little used by road authorities because they would prefer to have private investment in that area.
I note that the Authority may, with the consent of the Minister, provide guidelines in relation to the provision or operation of these service areas. Perhaps that will give the Minister an opportunity to tell us what he has in mind in terms of those guidelines.
Part V deals with toll roads. This is an area where it would be helpful to have a much more comprehensive statement of the Minister's policy approach to toll roads because there are a number of things that seem to be overlooked in the argument about tolling. There have been arguments here about tolling the Naas by-pass. There was a particularly difficult argument about the tolling of the new high level crossing of the Liffey at Strawberry Beds and there was an argument about tolling other sections of that particular road. If memory serves me well, a toll plaza was built at one stage, apparently without authorisation, and it had to be removed at some considerable cost to the taxpayer — something in the region of £100,000 was spent on building and taking away this toll plaza.
We need a debate here about the policy and the philosophy of tolling to give us some idea of the circumstances in which a toll can reasonably be applied. I do not know whether the Minister has any ideas about this because, if so, he has not told us and if his predecessor had such plans he did not tell us either. It seems there are some simple principles one can set up. For example, a facility like the East Link bridge or the high level crossing of the Liffey, which saves people much time and a long circuitous route which would be the alternative route, is an obvious case for tolling. I do not think there is much argument about that. The argument becomes a little more complex when you look at tolling sections of roads. There was a fairly extensive debate about a proposal to toll the Naas bypass in my own constituency. If I appear to make many references to my own constituency it is only because most of the motorways in his country happen to pass through my constituency or most of those which are currently planned, apart from the Dublin ring road. It does not do us much good in terms of the provision of county roads as we are very badly treated by the Minister in relation to funding for county roads, but the motorways are located there.
There was a fairly extensive debate about the idea of tolling the Naas bypass. In the end Kildare County Council — I think quite sensibly — decided against it on the grounds that the tolling operation would not succeed because the route was too short, the alternative routes were too easily available and did not create a huge time penalty for travellers and there was a desire to have several access points onto that bypass. That seems to suggest that if we are to apply tolls successfully a number of conditions would have to be met. First, the toll portion in question would have to be of a reasonable length and I think it should be at least 20 miles long to make it worth while. Second, alternative routes should be considerably longer or much less convenient. Third, there should not be high frequency of access points on the route.
One can see those principles in operation on motorways that are tolled in other countries. In France, for example, you will find that on all tolled roads there is a considerable distance between access points; they are certainly much further apart than eight kilometres which is the practice here. More frequently you will find they are anything from 40 kilometres to 60 kilometres apart. That means there is a substantial saving in time compared to alternative routes. Once you are on the motorway and if you pay the toll you will stay on it for quite a while.
There is another consideration also which has to do with the density of the road network and the density of population. Even though we have a much lower density of population in the country generally than any of the other member states of the European Community, we have a higher density of road network. We have more roads per square kilometre of land area than almost any other member state in the European Community. We are used to having a very wide and diverse road network. Those are not the conditions that make for easy agreement on tolling a new road and that is something we will have to bear in mind in looking at proposals for tolls.
In practical terms it would be worth while to impose a toll on a road if we had the mythical one I talked about earlier which went from Newlands Cross to Portlaoise. That would be a stretch of road that would be well worth tolling and it would be a viable proposition both for the authority providing the road and maintaining it and for people travelling on it. The proposal to toll the Naas bypass was definitely a loser on all counts, both on policy terms and in terms of practicality. I may be wrong about all these things. They are the simple observations of an ordinary traveller who also has an interest in getting value for money out of public expenditure. If I am wrong about that I would like to be told how, where and why I am wrong. Above all, I would like to hear from the Minister his policy approach to proposals for tolling a facility of this kind. It is not possible to infer what his policy approach would be from a consideration of the relevant sections in this Bill.
Section 59 (3) and (6) give the Minister more power to get his finger into the pie. For example, subsection (3) provides that bylaws — these are bylaws for tolls— shall have no effect unless and until the Minister approves them. Subsection (6) (a) provides that the Minister may by order—this is one of those passive orders so far as I can remember—approve the bylaws with or without modifications, or he may refuse to approve them. Therefore the relevant authorities, who will consult with the Commissioner of the Garda Síochana and so on in drawing up toll bylaws, may find that the Minister, without telling them the reason can come along and approve the bylaws with or without modifications or that he may refuse to approve them. It is not stated on what basis the Minister may modify or approve them or indeed refuse to approve them. Again, no guidelines are given for the edification of the public or the legislator as to what kind of considerations will move the Minister to make any of those decisions.
Section 61 deals with agreements for financing, maintenance, construction and operation of toll roads. This area has been the subject of much discussion in the past. I might add that it is a very vexed area. I hope I will not break any confidences when I say that I had proposals put to me at one stage for a toll operation. In effect the proposal amounted to a suggestion that the State would provide 80 per cent of the capital, that private enterprise would provide 20 per cent of the capital but that they would also have access to revenue from the tolls for a period of 30 years. I should say that that was one of the very early proposals put to me and neither the State nor the private sector had any geat experience of the operation up until then. Indeed, at that time there was only one toll scheme in operation.
It seemed to be a very bad deal for the State and that the kind of return the State would get on its money, both in terms of the benefit of the project itself and the financial return that would come from it, did not justify an agreement to the deal put up. Eventually it was withdrawn because I objected to the terms. It did not prove possible to have the terms modified to make them acceptable to me.
I gather that further proposals have been made in the meantime — some years have passed since then — but none of them has become a concrete proposal except one. Of course, I was under a lot of pressure at the time to agree to what was being put forward as a very creative way of funding part of the public capital programme. The conclusion I came to at the time was that for what is was going to cost the State it would be cheaper for the State to borrow money directly on the gilt market rather than enter into this type of agreement. Rightly or wrongly, that always seemed to be a reasonable test of whether we should regard a project as being attractive, because I could not justify either to myself or to anyone else a proposition that in order to have a "creative" approach to these problems I should end up paying more for the project than I needed to pay when I could have resort to funding through the gilt market.
All these considerations will apply when we come to look at agreements for financing, maintenance, construction and operation of toll roads. There will always be a temptation and a great deal of pressure on the Minister to look at innovative proposals for financing these roads and always a temptation for the Government to accept proposals that amount in one way or another to off balance sheet financing of a part of the public capital programme. It looks nice on the accounting side and it may have a cosmetic effect on the Exchequer borrowing requirement in any given year, but it does not have any real effect for taxpayers because at the end of the day what we have to look at is the bottom line and what it is going to cost the State.
Some of the ideas and projects which are put forward amount simply to a device for deferring the shouldering of the cost by the State. I think that they have to be looked at with a great deal of suspicion, because there is usually a very rosy view of the way interest rates and rates of return are going to change in the period between the construction of the project and the time the State has to take it over, typically 20 to 30 years down the road. They have to be subjected to rigorous analysis because, wherever the burden may seem to lie in the short term, at the end of the day it falls on the State and there is no way out of this unless of course we find cases where particular pieces of infrastructure or facilities will be provided by private enterprise and constructed and maintained wholly by private enterprise without recourse to the State. I am not aware of any such proposal. On the face of it such a proposal would seem to be much more attractive than any of the mixed financing proposals that I have seen and read about.
I am sure the Minister will have plenty of advice which will echo much of what I have to say and that he will get plenty of advice to ignore it, but I hope that he resists it. Having said that, whatever conclusion he comes to in particular cases, I wonder if the Minister would consider publishing the terms of such agreements. I may have missed it, but it seems there is nothing in the Bill that would require him to do so. A good deal of the State's financial activities takes place more or less in the background and it is not specifically or explicitly published, but in respect of most of the financial activity of the State there is a way of actually finding out what is going on, how much the State is paying for its money and how it goes about getting it. Apart from anything else, the financial sector in this country is so small that the word gets around fairly quickly. In any case the State is such a big operator on the market that it is very difficult for the State to do anything without it being noticed.
The situation may be a little bit different when we talk about the activities of a roads authority under an agreement made on the lines of the specifications of this Bill. It would be useful, and certainly helpful in informing public debate, if agreements of the kind envisaged were published. I see no reason they should not be. People talk about the need for commercial confidentiality. That is clearly very important when we reach the stage where a project goes to tender, where people are competing for the work, but once an agreement is made it is a perfectly legitimate object of public concern and the Minister should consider publishing these. In case the Minister gets the idea that I would single out himself or his Department or the new National Roads Authority, I can assure him that I would not, because I think the details of the financial dealings of the State, particularly in relation to major infrastructural programmes, should be published far more. Apart from anything else, the public and this House need to know what the basis of these agreements is so that we can form an idea as to whether policy is getting us good value for the taxpayers' moneys.
Part VI of the Bill, which is headed "Miscellaneous", deals with a number of peripheral but nevertheless important issues, the first of which is cycleways. I am glad that provision is being made for cycleways and I am sure that this will be welcomed all around the country. I expect to hear one of the spokespersons of the Green Party claiming credit for cycleways because they seem to think they are the only ones who ride bikes. Perhaps if they rode bikes a bit more they would know more about what is going on around them. However, I am delighted to see that the good sense which has caused councillors of many parties to urge that cycleways be provided has finally arrived and is now incorporated in this Bill.
I hope cycleways will be provided widely throughout the country, not because I have a romantic idea that cycling is a pleasant activity, is good for us and has nice associations, but rather because it forms a part of traffic planning in towns and cities which has been very much neglected. If we encouraged people to use bicycles far more we could help to solve some of the problems of congestion and pollution in towns and cities. Let nobody tell me that we do not have pollution in our towns. It is not only in Dublin that there is serious pollution from traffic. If you stand in the main street of Naas on a Saturday afternoon when it is busy you will get a fair amount of what ordinary people call pollution — it smells like hell — from traffic going by. That is pollution, whatever the air quality measurements may say.
I am delighted to see provision for cycleways in the Bill. Perhaps the Minister will indicate whether he will suggest guidelines which might provide, for example, that where possible cycleways will be totally separate from roadways. Obviously, in a city it could be difficult to do that in many areas, but it is a matter at which we should look because motorists and cyclists are a mutual danger to each other a lot of the time and it would help with traffic management and general comfort if cycleways were where possible separated from the roads and carriageway.
Section 66 deals with temporary dwellings on national roads, etc. It refers to the protected roads mentioned in section 43. I have a question in regard to that, largely one of definition. Does this prohibition of the erection, placing or retention of temporary dwellings on national roads, motorways, busways and protected roads apply before the roads are categorised or afterwards? I gather that the problem being dealt with here is one we have seen quite frequently, where members of the travelling community see a nice new section of roadway completed but not yet used, move in and occupy the area. I do not know whether this section of the Bill could apply in that case because it seems to me that until the road is finished it will not be categorised. I suspect that perhaps the Bill may not deal with the manifestation of the problem most frequently seen and may deal with something else which is less of a problem but which nevertheless should be dealt with.
Section 67 pulled me up with a bit of a start because it seems to provide substantial powers for roads authorities to require owners of land or buildings in the vicinity of roads to do many things. Section 67 (2) (a) provides that the owner or occupier of land shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that a tree, shrub, hedge or other vegetation on the land is not a hazard or potential hazard to persons using a public road. Who decides whether it is a hazard? My conclusion from reading the Bill is that the roads authority in question decide whether it is a hazard. That leads to certain things because subsection (2) (b) provides that where the roads authority have come to this conclusion they may serve a notice in writing on the owner or occupier of the land on which such tree, shrub, hedge or other vegetation is situated requiring the preservation, felling, cutting, lopping, trimming or removal of such tree, shrub, etc. on the grounds that they are a traffic hazard. It seems that the roads authority decide whether these things are hazards and order the owner of the land on which is situated the tree, shrub, etc. to have it lopped, felled or any of the other things proposed in the section. I wonder if we need to give a roads authority such a substantial power. I may be wrong, but I do not think they have that power at present. I can see that hedges by reason of their height might create traffic hazards at bends or corners, but I am not too sure whether that is always the case.
It is the practice over much of the country — there is a lot of it in my constituency and in the Minister's constituency of North Tipperary — for farmers to trim their hedges from time to time. Some of them do it for practical reasons, some do it for aesthetic reasons — although these days they cannot afford to do much for aesthetic reasons. In the course of doing it they destroy the natural habitat of a good many species, particularly birds. There is enough pressure on the environment already without road authorities coming along and in the name of traffic safety requiring owners or occupiers to carry out all these functions. I wonder if that power is not excessive. At the very least, I should like to have some idea of what may lead them to decide that a particular tree, shrub, etc. is a hazard or a potential hazard and, if so, what to do about it.
Of course, the landowners may object to this and bring a case to the District Court, which is provided for later in the section. However, subsection (5) (b) provides that no appeal shall lie to the Circuit Court from a decision of the District Court under this section. Why? I do not know whether there is justification for closing an avenue of redress which people normally had. Are there any precedents for saying that there shall be no further jurisdiction and, if so, what are they? I know that going to court is expensive and tedious and I do not think that people would resort to it often. However, I wonder if the principle is so important that we should say there is no appeal from a decision of the District Court, particularly since later on in subsections (8), (9), (10) and (11) there are powers for the roads authority to carry out the works themselves or to have them carried out at somebody else's charge where the landowner in question refuses or fails to carry out the work. Are all those powers needed? Would a smaller number of powers secure the aim which the Minister has in mind in making these provisions in the Bill?
Section 68 deals with unauthorised signs, caravans and so on on public roads. I am given to understand that one of the objects of this section is to regulate street trading and markets. Like many other Members of the House, I have had representations about this from people who like the idea of this section and from those who do not. I dislike this section. There are a number of places — not as many as there are elsewhere — where street trading in various forms has been a long tradition or has grown up in recent years. Indeed, street trading in Dublin has always been a very vexed question. However, I like street trading and street traders because they bring a bit of colour to our towns and cities which otherwise would be lacking. They bring character to shopping which otherwise would also be lacking and I cannot for the life of me see that they do any long term damage to settled traders.
In my own town of Kildare, for example, there is a market every Thursday morning in The Square. It is a very lively place. It causes dreadful traffic congestion. People like to park as near to the market as they can get. The Square is an important parking place in Kildare and when it is occupied by stalls cars cannot be parked there, leading to more congestion. Even without the bypass, that extra bit of congestion on a Thursday morning is a small price to pay for the extra life it brings to the town. I enjoy markets. The market held in Athy on Tuesdays may be less lively than the one held in Kildare, but nevertheless it adds colour and life to the town. Although some of my neighbours have spoken to me about it, I am not convinced that a street market of that kind interferes with settled traders or takes any business away from them. I believe a market is far more likely to increase the amount of business in a town than reduce it. If the intention of this section is to restrict those markets, then I oppose it; I do not like the idea.
Markets have many other advantages. People will allege that traders in these markets are trading unfairly and operating in a grey area half way into the black economy. Quite frankly, I regard that as a problem for the Revenue Commissioners and the other people who are supposed to regulate the way we pay our taxes. While it may be true, I do not think the allegation that a number of these people have a slightly cavalier attitude to paying their taxes is a good enough reason to interfere with street trading. I hope the Minister can assure me that it is not the objective of this section to crack down on street trading. I should like to see street trading encouraged for the sake of the colour and variety it brings into our lives.
I have to say — there might be one or two examples of this in the Minister's constituency which he might look at — that markets are a great place to canvass during elections. It is a delightful experience to canvass people in a market. I am not saying that it is worth keeping these markets for this reason only but it is a side benefit.