I move:
That Dáil Éireann:
–aware of the importance for the economy of the speedy delivery of the planned upgrading of our national road network;
–conscious of the need for adequate and genuine consultation with the communities affected by these projects;
–mindful of the widespread concern and anxiety throughout the country on major road development projects;
–concerned that the current compulsory purchase order – CPO – procedure is too cumbersome and slow and can result in unfair prices being paid to landowners;
–believing that bottlenecks in the planning system are delaying the delivery of key projects and that the Planning and Development Act, 2001, has not been and cannot be implemented due to lack of qualified personnel;
–knowing that in the national development plan public-private partnerships are envisaged for 11 major road projects and that the NRA has decided that this will involve widespread road tolling;
condemns the Government for the delays in the delivery of the national road network and calls on the Government to immediately:
–take steps, including amending legislation, to ensure a greater level of accountability on the part of the NRA in its relationship with local authorities, public representatives and citizens;
–establish procedures to allow for meaningful public consultation by ensuring early publication and circulation of all appropriate studies, reports, surveys, maps, constraints studies, investigations and all essential documentation and to ensure that the views of the public representatives and citizens are duly acknowledged and considered prior to the announcement of any route selection;
–reform the CPO procedure; and
–justify to Dáil Éireann its economic rationale for the imposition of road tolls.
This motion is tabled in the context of the high levels of distress regarding the method of the roll-out of the national road network. We all agree there is a need to upgrade the national road network for a variety of reasons – safety, to minimise transport costs and improve competitiveness and, most of all, to ensure greater regional balance.
There is an acceptance of the need for a national road network and agreement on the extent of the problem and how it should be addressed. In addition, for the first time a comprehensive programme of road building has been outlined in the national development plan which would, if implemented, at least lay the skeleton of a comprehensive, strategic network. The plan is not without its flaws and there are large gaps in parts of the country. However, it is the most significant plan in the history of the State. For the first time we have enough money to implement the plan.
With all this in place one has to ask why it is going so badly wrong. Why is every project, whether by the NRA or the Department of the Environment and Local Government, taking so long from conception to construction? Why are communities up in arms and distressed and why do they feel that decisions affecting them are being taken over which they have no control? Why do they feel they have no one to whom they can appeal or from whom they can seek assurances? Why are individuals put in the position where the first they hear of plans to take their home, business or farm is when the postman arrives with the notice of the compulsory purchase order? Why is the CPO procedure so lengthy, cumbersome and rigid that sometimes the compensation paid bears no relation to the loss suffered by the individual or the gains which accrue to others who may not lose land?
I could go on with questions. However, what it boils down to is that the system is not working for the communities on whom it directly impacts or in the national interest. Every road project, national or otherwise, is dogged by delays from conception to construction. As a result, not only does every project cost more than it should, but the costs of the delays are incalculable. When projects finally get to the construction stage, they do so at the cost of completely disaffected and disillusioned local communities.
The problems begin at the outset, the public consultation stage. Almost overnight, we move from a situation in which everyone is in favour of a road to one in which everyone is against it. This can only be because of the totally flawed public consultation process.
I am sure that local authorities and the NRA are genuinely committed to consultation. However, they are not achieving that objective. There is a lack of information and the information that is available is grudgingly given. The practice of offering multiple choices in the initial route selection can only be designed to confuse and divide communities. To offer seven or eight choices, not just regarding road projects, but also in the context of the Luas, is to throw seven or eight communities into a frenzy of anxiety. That anxiety is normally needless as the promoter knows from the outset that there is one, or no more than two, options. In most cases the preferred option has already been identified so there is an illusion of consultation and choice. This may not be intentional, but this is a dishonest approach to consultation. The public knows it is a dishonest approach which will, ultimately, be self-defeating.
Most road projects fundamentally impact on people's homes, properties, businesses and way of life. When a project is announced the public craves simple, honest and direct information. People want to know how they will get to work when the road is built, how they will access farmland if it is bisected by the road, what kind of boundary will be available or what compensation they can expect. These are legitimate questions which people would be daft not to ask. However, people are not given answers early or honestly enough.
People cannot be given detailed answers if there are seven or eight route options being offered. It is as if choosing a strategic national route was a matter of "eeny meeny miny mo". What possessed the NRA to think that anyone would choose a route on that basis or that the public would be fooled by it? Real and meaningful consultation is not easy, as every public representative will know. Such consultation requires a knowledge of human nature and an understanding of the fears which change holds for us all. It requires communication skills and, most of all, it requires giving direct information to the public.
There is a wealth of European literature on how to engage in public consultation, how to get people involved in a project and how to give them a sense of ownership of a project which deals with their fears and anxieties at an early stage and overcomes objections at that stage. We must start to examine better means of communicating early with residents. We must change our approach as we are simply inviting objections. There will be objections, court cases and an uphill battle until the last yard of tarmac is laid.
In this week of a failed referendum and a low voter turnout, when we wonder at the cause of the democratic deficit and the apparent detachment, disillusionment and disaffection of the public with the political process, we need not look much further than the farce we call public consultation. When we have antagonised all concerned at the outset, we then move to the CPO stage, which again involves a democratic deficit. Almost overnight, we have moved from a situation in which the elected members of local authorities made the CPOs for roads which were confirmed by the Minister to a situation in which the NRA makes the CPO which is confirmed by An Bord Pleanála. The Government has handed the entire process over to two unaccountable bodies and the democratic process has been bypassed.
I do not doubt that the motivation for this change was to speed up the delivery of the national road network. This approach might have been correct if the necessary safeguards had been put in place to protect those who are the subject of CPOs as well as those who are not. In many cases, those most affected are those who are not the subject of CPOs, communities which may not be losing land but which will be severely impacted on to the extent that the quality of life may be threatened and even destroyed. The result is that, far from speeding up the process of road building, every project mooted will end up in the courts, will take longer and cost more, and in the end no one will be happy. Motorists will not feel they have been well served by the State.
The CPO system has been in operation for almost 100 years. The system is archaic, cumbersome, tortuously slow and unfair. It involves an incredible 18 different procedures which can take years to complete. Throughout the entire process, there is a dearth of information for the individual caught up in it against his or her will.
If I had time I could recount many anecdotes of which I have personal experience where the lives of individuals were virtually put on hold while they were subjected to an uncompleted CPO. I could describe the stress which this limbo causes, particularly to elderly people. During this time marriages can break down, requiring a division of property, people can die or their entire circumstances can change while their property is without value and cannot be sold. During the route selection process, those affected can at least draw comfort and consolation from the support of others. However, once one reaches the CPO stage one is on one's own. Each case is different so that each individual, whether a householder, a business person or a farmer, will have to employ a consultant at his or her expense to advise him or her on the likely impact. This will not merely have a financial impact, it will also impact on the environment, noise levels and property boundaries and result in the loss of access and general inconvenience. An entire industry has grown up around providing these services for which people must pay directly, allegedly to promote the common good. The State could, at the very least, pay these costs.
One of the most outrageous aspects of the CPO procedure is that land can be taken prior to a claim being made for compensation and without the landowner knowing what he or she will get for it. When landowners find out what value has been accorded to the land, CPOs have already been confirmed and it is too late for objections. In any case, there is nobody to whom they can object unless they opt for a costly court case. This is like someone being forced to sell his or her house without knowing how much he or she will get for it until the new owner moves in. Is it any wonder that half the country is up in arms over this procedure? When the level of compensation is eventually decided, it is subject to such outdated and rigid rules that people simply cannot be adequately compensated. Even if a valuer or arbitrator recognises that individuals have been treated unfairly, the system is not sufficiently flexible to provide for reasonable compensation.
In the case of farm land, compensation is calculated with reference to agricultural prices even though they may bear no relation to the actual loss suffered, the loss not only to the value of the farm if a person were to sell it, but also to the viability of the enterprise. When land is severed from a farm or any other business, the meagre compensation allowable does not even come close to adequate recompense for the ongoing inconvenience and difficulties with which the landowners and their families must cope forever. The final insult is that when the cheque eventually arrives, it is subject to capital gains tax. It is incredible that people are taxed on a gain they have not made and a sale they never wanted in the first instance. It would be very difficult to contrive a system more adversarial, cumbersome, unfair or least likely to smooth the path for the delivery of road infrastructure.
As if those who suffer CPOs are not sufficiently badly treated, those who do not have their land directly acquired, but live in close proximity to the road are probably in the worst position of all, having virtually no rights or safeguards. Entire communities and towns can be severed as a result of CPOs and the impact in these instances can be even greater than on those who lose their land. The environmental impact assessment system is the only means of protection in these cases. However, as the Minister is probably aware, this system does not always successfully identify adverse impacts and, even where it does, it effectively only pays lip service to the impact a development may have on people's lives. No real effort is made to develop ameliorating or mitigating measures to protect affected communities.
Irish roads and motorways are designed to the highest specifications from which, as motorists, we will all benefit. Why is the Government so reluctant to accept that individuals bear an enormous and unrecognised private cost for these benefits? Millions of pounds can be found for construction costs, but such is the system's rigidity that if one is unlucky enough to be outside the line of the road and has not succeeded in hammering out mitigating or compensating measures during the public inquiry, one cannot get a single penny once the inquiry has concluded. People may only discover the adverse impact of a development subsequent to the inquiry's conclusion. I have encountered numerous examples of this in my constituency. The system is a very bad one, particularly because long delays can elapse between the public inquiry and the commencement of construction work. A road is currently being built in my constituency in regard to which a public inquiry was held 15 years ago. The traffic, noise and pollution levels projected at that stage bear no relation to the world in which the road is now being built, yet members of the public have no comeback whatsoever.
I want to concentrate on the issue of road tolling and the NRA in my remaining time. This represents another sleight of hand on the part of the Government which has conveniently handed over all decisions on tolling to the NRA. The Government says tolling has nothing to do with it and Ministers are not obliged to answer any parliamentary questions or engage in any debate on the matter. On the other hand, the NRA states that when it levies tolls, it is only implementing Government policy. People want to know exactly who is in charge and actually making decisions in this area. Some 11 large and different sections of the country are to be subject to toll charges for the next 30 years, yet there has not been any public or political debate on the matter. The NRA ploughs on, completely unaccountable to anybody.
True, the Government informed us that £1 billion would be raised by the private sector for road construction, but, overnight, this private sector involvement translated into road tolling as if the two were synonymous. It is possible to have public-private partnerships in the absence of tolling and equally possible to have tolling in the absence of public-private partnerships. I am opposed to neither. I am not opposed to public-private partnerships and I am not opposed to tolling, particularly where the motivation is traffic management as is the case with the port tunnel. However, I and other members of the public strongly object to the failure to provide any rationale for tolling. The Government has not even provided an economic rationale for the tolling of roads. The evidence to date shows that tolling does not deliver infrastructure any quicker or any more cheaply. Some estimates reveal that the public will pay 13 times more than necessary. It is well known that the most expensive means of road provision is private tolling.
There may be some rationale for a Government toll where the user could at least be sure that the money collected would go into Irish coffers to be spent on maintaining existing Irish roads or building new ones. Why are we handing a virtual licence to print money over to the private sector, almost certainly foreigners? Private foreign companies will come to Ireland like bees to a honey pot at the delightful prospect of taking over responsibility for the tolling of Irish roads for the next 30 years. It is not as if Ireland does not have the money to build these roads. Today, the Taoiseach stated we were short by approximately £1 billion. We are not building particularly fast and all these roads are not being built simultaneously. It is possible to provide for longer phase-ins to the projects. Even if it did not want to do this, there is nothing stopping the Government from borrowing money which it can do quite cheaply. If it were still necessary to toll these roads – the Taoiseach appeared very concerned that they would generate a flow of income – at least we would have ownership of our roads, control over the location of tolls and the flexibility to adjust charges to prevent high diversion rates into towns which will inevitably occur if the NRA gets its way in regard to tolling around towns.
It is simply not good enough to hand over control of large sections of the national road network to private – probably foreign – interests in the absence of any explanation of the necessity to do so or any democratic input into safeguarding the interests of taxpayers, motorists and the general public. If we want to build roads, the Minister must alter the public consultation procedure, provide some political direction to the NRA which should be made accountable to this House and radically revamp the CPO procedure to make it more efficient and ensure it provides for realistic compensation for affected landowners.