Vol. 416 No. 6
275 Mr. Yates asked the Minister for Tourism, Transport and Communications if she has any comparative data as to total transport costs for the Republic of Ireland as against our European competitors; and if she will make a statement on the matter.
My Department does not have comparative data of the kind mentioned by the Deputy. It is generally accepted, however, that our peripheral island location imposes on Irish exporters additional transport costs by comparison with their competitors situated on the European mainland. For example, the European Commission in its report "One Market, One Money", made some calculations of the scale of the penalty imposed by distance from the centre of the EC trading block. The study concluded that the penalty varies by a factor ranging from 1.9 for Athens to 1.8 for Dublin, 1.6 for Rome and Lisbon and 1.4 for Madrid. These figures are for capital cities and take no account of time taken to travel from, say, Galway to Dublin which will add considerably to the capital-to-capital penalties.
The reduction of these cost disadvantages is one of the principal objectives of the current EC-assisted Operational Programme on Peripherality which provides for a range of improvements in our road, rail, air and sea transport infrastructure.
The policy, which I will be maintaining, of securing increased competition and efficiency in the various sectors of the transport market in respect of both internal and international services is also aimed at providing the optimum levels of service for transport users at the lowest possible cost.
