I just have a few more remarks to make and they concern mainly our urban transport. As someone who has spent a great deal of time in the US—too much perhaps— I realise the problems which the dominance of the car has brought to that society. The lack of provision for any proper urban transport has now run the US into tremendous problems. Here is a situation where the economists have been proved wrong. The economists subscribed some years ago to the abolition, the obliteration or the allowing to fall into disuse of the urban transport systems in the US. Now they are making dreadful and desperate efforts to resuscitate them and they are not having a great deal of success. At this stage in the development of American cities the expenditure required to buy any land for development of urban motorways or urban trackways is colossal and is causing great problems.
I should like to quote from the OECD Observer of October, 1972, an article entitled The Future of European Intercity Transport. It was an article which came from deliberations of the nine OECD members, including this country, and it is a discussion of some of the problems that occur when one tries to build urban motorways. I quote:
Moreover, the building of highways, particularly in heavily populated regions, meets with increasing opposition from the public on the grounds of pollution, noise, displacement of people and disruption of neighbourhoods. The current controversies in London, Zurich and Paris and the cancellation of highway projects in Toronto and in a number of United States cities testify to the growing public concern about urban highway construction and to the strength of citizens' protest.
We can be absolutely sure that any big urban motorway plan in this country would bring a similar outcry. In fact, it is now going on in Belfast where there is a great deal of pressure being put on the new Executive and particularly on Mr. Bradford, the Minister for the Environment, to stop Phase 2—I think that is the phase it has got to— and further stages of the big urban motorway development.
I should like to ask the Minister to say at what stage are our plans, particularly in the cities of Dublin and Cork, for developments of urban transport. I have here the very interesting Heanue Report on Transportation in the Dublin area. It is full of ideas. I do not intend to go through them in detail but one in particular interests me and that is the development of an underground system which, on page 28 of the Heanue Report, would start at Lansdowne Road, go through Merrion Square, Grafton Street with a central terminal somewhere in Westmoreland Street with branches to Broadstone Station. They envisage a bus lane or trains running from Broadstone again and then another branch through Parnell Square, the North Circular Road and Fairview. That is one of the many interesting ideas which are set out in great detail in the Heanue Report and he makes it fairly clear that it is not possible in the Dublin area to do great suburban motorway development, certainly in the centre of the city. There are some ring roads proposed but certainly in the centre of the city the ideal form of transport is the underground and we have been very slow in thinking of development of an underground transport system in this city. I should like to hear what the Minister has to say about our plans for a Dublin underground.
There are a few other minor points. Out city bus services have an upper limit to their efficiency which is caused by the traffic density in the city. That is the main precluding factor. If one could cut down the traffic density by some means or other, specifically by the Richardson plan which I mentioned earlier, then one would help to solve this. Sooner or later we will have to tackle the problem, also mentioned in the Heanue Report, of cutting down traffic coming into city centres.
Heanue also envisages the designation of more streets as pedestrian ways. It is a great pity that the Grafton Street experiment was ceased, and there was one in Henry Street as well. Heanue makes it clear that if life is going to be worth living in city centres then there must be more streets for pedestrians only. Inevitably there will have to be a curtailment of traffic coming into city centres. That is one of the things we have to face.
Another problem CIE might face is the problem of pollution from the diesel exhaust fumes of the buses. I should like to see CIE in a civic-spirited way taking the lead and fitting these—I am not sure of the technical term—back burners or bafflers or whatever you put on exhausts. They are standard in many American States. They ensure that the emission from the exhaust is circulated again, and therefore comes out much less dangerous to the ordinary person. Anybody who comes into Dublin now, particularly from Holyhead on the mail boat to Dún Laoghaire on a clear morning, will see this pall of black gaseous material hanging over the city, and it is mainly fumes from cars, buses and of course household smoke. Anything that could be done to cut down the fumes from our buses would be a very important gesture by CIE. We should see that the national transport company is the first to make that gesture before legislation is brought in making these back burners compulsory.
Finally, I should like to ask the Minister about a service in which I have a special interest, having travelled on it very often, that is, the CIE service to the Aran Islands. The Naomh Eanna must be getting close to its replacement date. I know there is an air service to the islands now but it is essential that the shipping service to Aran Islands be maintained and it is CIE's responsibility to bear the loss. In other words, the taxpayer pays for it. It is an essential subsidy to make life on the islands more attractive, and perhaps the Minister would say something about that.
As I conclude, I would urge, somewhat in the same way as I started, that the accounts for this very large sum of money which we are voting to CIE, when the money is spent, be made available to the public representatives and to the media and that some sort of planned programmed budgeting system be used so that it is pretty clear whether the money is being well spent or whether it is being wasted. With such large sums of money it is very important that the public who are paying the piper should at least know the tune.
I am glad to see that over the last few years CIE's public relations have improved a great deal. It is very important from the point of view of public relations that the money is accounted for in a way in which the public can understand how its subsidy is being spent and where it goes.