I move: "That the Bill do now pass."
Local Government (Toll Roads) Bill, 1978: Fifth Stage.
(Cavan-Monaghan): The effect of this Bill is to provide machinery for operating toll roads which motorists and commercial users will be required to pay for. This Bill makes history because it is the first time that the Oireachtas has been asked to give authority for the creation of toll roads. I regard the imposition of tolls on motorists as a serious one. Motorists through taxes and excise duties of one sort or another over the years have contributed hundreds of millions of £s to the Exchequer. It is unreasonable that they should now be asked to pay for the use of the roads.
The Government relieved motorists from paying road tax up to 16 horse power cars. I believe that this Bill could well be the thin edge of the wedge because it introduces a charge for using the roads. When the road authorities and the Minister are operating this Bill they should make sure that the tolls, which will be imposed and charged under the machinery provided under the Bill, are reasonable. Before they enter into agreement with any person, corporation or company they should be satisfied that the proposed tolls are reasonable.
Toll bridges have been provided in England by public expense and not by private enterprise, as is proposed in this Bill. I understand that it is a very costly business to finance those toll bridges. I believe that the charge there is from 15p to 20p per private car and that charge is not doing much more than pay for its collection and is not going anywhere near servicing the interest charges on the capital involved in the undertaking. In Britain the toll bridges are provided out of public funds by the road authorities or their equivalent. If there is a shortfall in payment of the interest at the end of the year that interest is added on to the capital and the general taxpayer pays for it.
We will have a different situation here because the toll roads will be provided by private enterprise, a company, corporation or an individual who wants to make money out of it. You will not get public benefactors to invest millions of £s in this sort of undertaking unless they can make money out of it. Those who undertake this will not be in a position to pass on the deficit to the general taxpayer as happens in Britain. I believe that the toll charges here will increase and that a case will be made that the suggested toll is inadequate, is not giving a proper return, is not servicing the deficit and is not giving a return on capital. I believe that the tolls will then be increased substantially.
I understand that in Britain in respect of the proposed Humber Bridge there is talk of a toll of £1 per car so as to bring some reality into the financing of the undertaking. If that is the sort of charge to which road users in this city can look forward, they would be better off with the old system of tax because of their having to pay a high charge on every occasion on which they use a toll road or bridge. Dublin Corporation are negotiating for the building of a bridge to span the area from Ringsend to the North Wall quay. I understand that there is general agreement on the corporation in this regard, but I hope sincerely that when the deal is being negotiated the corporation will ascertain exactly what the users of the bridge are to be charged.
This afternoon and during the various Stages of the Bill we have discussed the terms of the tolls. Deputy Quinn has told us that there are two schools of thought about the advisability of introducing tolls, but there is one view that seems to be common to both and that is that tolls should not be continued indefinitely. Notwithstanding the depleted forces here this evening I forced a division on an amendment which would have rendered mandatory the insertion of a termination clause in the agreement. As the amendment was lost we must wait and see what will happen. All we are asking is that the agreement be reasonable in terms of tolls. When we invite private enterprise to do a job that the State should be doing we do not expect them to become public benefactors, but we must ensure that they do not get more than a fair deal. That is what parliament and debates of this kind are all about. There is a good deal of scope for negotiation between a road authority and the toll bridge or toll road contractor. If there is a lucrative or a prestige site and when an offer is made to somebody who wishes to construct and operate a toll road at a place which is attractive, that person should be invited to construct another toll road elsewhere that might not be so lucrative but which might be needed badly and for which finance might not be available either locally or from the Exchequer. I know that that may be thrown back at me by way of saying that I have been talking about the difficulty of making these toll roads or bridges pay, but of course they can be made pay if one charges enough and if they are used by the people. My suggestion should be taken into account when making deals of the sort that will be made in the new situation as created by this Bill.
These are some of the points that occur to me regarding this Bill which has had a rather odd sort of passage through the House. It was introduced on 13 December 1978 and when the Second Stage was taken we were told that there was considerable urgency about the matter. However, the whole thing was brought to a halt in June last, though there was ample opportunity for concluding the legislation before the Summer recess. Instead, it was put into cold storage and has now come up again towards the end of the year. We know that, in anticipation of the passing of the Bill, Dublin Corporation have been taking certain steps and reaching certain decisions; but the Bill is one that the public will be watching carefully. The schemes that will be authorised on foot of the Bill will be watched with much interest and will be scrutinised closely by the public generally for many years to come.
It is right and proper that Deputies Fitzpatrick and Quinn should examine in detail all the provisions of this measure but we must realise, too, that we are dealing with a new type of legislation, legislation that is therefore exciting. However, I appreciate the meticulous way in which both the Deputies have examined some aspects of the Bill this evening. Since this is a Bill to deal with a new type of situation there is bound to be a period of trial and error. Of course, it will be necessary to scrutinise the working of the legislation in regard to any new undertaking in any part of the country. In some cases there will be a mixture of both private and public enterprise involved. In this context we are reminded of the proposed toll bridge in Dublin city. It may well be that after a year or so of that bridge being in operation we may find it necessary to make changes, but the local authority will have sufficient powers to make a good deal with the sponsors of the bridge on foot of this Bill, and even with local legislation they will have the power to have a bridge built. I am sure everybody here will agree that the person building the bridge is entitled to a reasonable profit on the project, but in common with other Members of the House, I would question the making of too much profit in this way. After a bridge has been built and has paid for itself and the builder has been allowed a reasonable profit, we must put whatever profits are there to the common good. That poses the question: if they do not pay, do they pay for the loss as well? Deputy Fitzpatrick mentioned a charge of £1 per truck——
(Cavan-Monaghan): I said I understood it was proposed on a new bridge to charge £1 a car.
The charge will be much the same. We are keen on the toll bridge because we believe it will prove a boon to motorists, will relieve traffic congestion in certain areas of the city and make life safer for those who live there. Even if they do charge £1 a truck——
(Cavan-Monaghan): I said £1 a car.
Many a person would willingly pay £1 if he was caught in a traffic jam in the Pearse Street area. We are told by CIE that it takes buses an hour to go from the garage in Ringsend to the terminus to start operating.
When this Bill becomes law and we have the first toll bridge we should examine every detail of the working of it including the ultimate cost. I welcome and support the building of the bridge in Dublin. The person building it is entitled to a fair profit but when the bridge has been paid for we should be prepared to examine it even if it means bringing legislation before the House.
(Cavan-Monaghan): The Deputy should have voted for my amendment if he understood it.
I understand that this is provided for in the Bill and the Deputy's amendment is superfluous. The guarantee is in the Bill already. If we adopt a proper attitude to toll roads and bridges we will fill in something which has been missing in the life of the country. None of us likes paying tax but we are paying a hidden tax when we try to drive cars and trucks through traffic jams. If private enterprise moves in to help with road building, why not welcome them? We do not object to them building houses because the public authorities cannot build enough.
The discussion has been a healthy one. I hope the Bill will become law very shortly and will usher in a new era in road travel which will simplify things and perhaps give us a more equitable system of taxation.
I have considerable respect for my Dublin South-East colleague, Deputy Moore, but he has given me the impression of wanting to travel down both sides of the road, toll road or no, on this issue. In rejecting the last amendment, which he obviously supports in spirit if not with his feet, the Minister has left himself open to being backed into a corner whereby, having made the modification as he clearly indicates he or his successors have the right to do, the financial backers, the much-lauded private sector, will simply say: "Sorry, we will not accept the time frame of duration that you by way of modification have inserted into this agreement. It was an option that you choose yourself." If the Minister had accepted the very mild amendment Deputy Fitzpatrick put forward he would have put himself in a position of not leaving his side vulnerable——
The amendment has been debated already.
Since Deputy Moore choose to speak on that point, I felt I should reply. Having regard to the fact that the Minister of State will reply and also to the fact that it has taken one year for this legislation to go through the House, can the Minister indicate what Government policy is in relation to putting this enabling legislation into effect? We know that the declared policy objective at the outset was to encourage the private sector to go into road building. Since that declared objective was stated by the Government, they have published their roads plan for the 1980's. Can the Minister indicate what percentage, section or part of the roads plan they envisage will be financed by the private sector? What sections of the roads plan will be financed by tolls irrespective of whether the finance in the form of capital made available either by the private sector, the State, the EEC Regional Fund or the EMS resource transfers is recouped or financed by way of tolls? Have the Government a policy on this or are they, as I suspect, simply responding to a one off inquiry from a single source in the private sec-tor—the Government have never denied this—in relation to a toll road, that is, the Ringsend Bridge?
On Second Stage I said that the private sector have researched road structure and have come up with the observation that the only profitable area for private enterprise is toll bridges. There are no more than about five of them. It is unprofitable for the private sector to attempt to produce a toll road because of the land acquisition problem involved irrespective of the powers a road authority have under compulsory purchase legislation. The commitment of capital and the charges that the commercial banks and the associated banks are making for such capital is in itself a deterrent, having regard to the un-specifiable length of time involved in finalising such land acquisition.
In fairness to the Minister, when we first talked about this legislation the roads plan had not been published. Presumably a roads policy still needed to be clarified within the Department and the Custom House. Now that that has been done and the Government, through the economic Ministers, have clearly identified that telecommunications and infrastructure, that is roads basically, are major deterrents to industrial progress, and therefore to the Government's overall economic objective of job creation, and since the Government's public sector borrowing requirements are totally askew with their declared manifesto commitment, can the Minister indicate if the Government propose to bring forward or meet on time as indicated in the 1980 road plan any of the road proposals by means of a toll? By that I mean that, where the Government take the initiative in saying to a local authority that they would like them, in the national interest and in accordance with this White Paper or that Green Paper, to bring forward, for example, the Limerick by-pass, that they would recommend to Limerick Corporation and council that they should provide a toll roads scheme and that they would make a specific application to Brussels under the Regional Fund or Ortoli facility for funding on the basis that part of that capital investment could be refunded by the economic return that could be measured from it. That is a legitimate question and one to which the Minister should give serious reply.
I would regard myself as being fairly well informed, but neither I nor the Labour Party have any evidence to suggest that, other than the declared interest by the private sector in participating in toll roads that we are already aware of and to which the House has already referred, there is any other interest being positively declared. In that context, perhaps the Minister would update his reply to me of Wednesday, 14 March. At that stage, I asked the Minister for the Environment the number of organisations, both private and professional, which had contacted him in writing, expressing a positive interest in participating in the provision of toll roads and, in respect of such indications, (1) the number of such organisations, both private and professional, (2) the number of specific projects identified and (3) the approximate volume of capital which was indicated as being available for participation in such toll road schemes.
The Minister stated in March of this year that he was aware that a number of road authorities also have been approached about particular projects in their areas. At that stage this legislation was hardly through its Second Stage. Perhaps the Minister is now in a position, since the legislation has been clearly published and, indeed, one local authority has moved in anticipation of its being passed, to indicate to the House just how successful this legislation has been in attracting private capital into the road capital programme. The Labour Party have always maintained in this House that this legislation is, essentially, enabling legislation. There are certain drafting defects which were identified on Committee Stage and these have come up again on Report Stage, but it is enabling legislation with the purpose of improving that section of the national primary road system which is grossly defective in certain key areas, which has been identified as being a major barrier to economic progress in the eighties and nineties.
It is quite clear to all on all sides of the House, and to all of us who have contact with local authorities and are aware that the Government's economic targets are totally off course, particularly with regard to Government borrowing, that the capital resources required to make major improvements in the national primary road system simply do not exist. An alternative to replacing these is provided in the possibility of a toll scheme but that would require, not the private sector but the public sector itself, that is, the local authorities, road authorities, getting support and encouragement from the Department of the Environment for themselves to put forward toll road schemes.
In conclusion, could the Minister, if he is in a position to do so, indicate if any other private interests—without in any way wishing to break the confidentiality of an approach, or looking for the names or locations—have approached the Department in a positive sense, since March 14 and, if so, could he indicate the volume of capital involved? Could the Minister indicate, now that the Government's roads programme has been published, if he or the Government proposes to suggest, or indeed encourage, any local authority who have not been approached by the private sector to themselves come forward with a toll road scheme? Could he indicate whether such a scheme of road financing is more likely to attract funds out of Brussels, such as EMS resources transfers or, alternatively, the Ortoli facility? On those three questions, I conclude.
In reply, I make three important points. First, the Bill is an enabling measure. Therefore there is no question of any compulsion or pressure on road authorities to constitute tolls for public roads. Secondly, the Bill is so drafted as to preserve, in full, the existing statutory responsibilities, role and power of decision of the road authorities in relation to the provision of public roads in their administrative areas. All the important decisions of road authorities under the Bill, that is, the making of a toll scheme, of by-laws for the operation of toll roads, entering into agreements with private persons for financing, construction, maintenance and management of a toll project, the making of agency arrangements with other road authorities, will be reserved for the elected members of the local authorities themselves.
Anyone who knows the local authorities system as well as Deputy Fitzpatrick and Deputy Quinn do should be quite satisfied with the vesting of the real decisions in regard to tolls in the elected members in this manner, which is virtually a guarantee that there will be no abuse of the enabling powers provided in this Bill—and that is the third point. The rights and interests of the public generally will be amply protected under the Bill. Notice of the making of a toll scheme, accompanied by an explanatory statement, must be published in the press. The public will have at least one month to examine the toll scheme, accompanying explanatory statement and any relevant maps and a further period of at least two months in which to lodge objections with the Minister. In the event of an objection, a local inquiry must be held.
Deputy Quinn had some queries in relation to the Government's national road plan for the 1980's. The position is at the moment that the Government are quite confident that they will be able to finance, by various means, this scheme in full during the 1980's.
Question put and agreed to.