In the Seanad on 22 March 2000, I said:

We have never had a transport strategy in this country and we have underfunded road and rail transport, whether public or private. 

The only reason we got round to considering such expenditure was that a few years ago the EU suddenly gave us a lump sum. It told us what we could do with it and we came up with the idea of Luas which otherwise would never have seen the light of day. The irony is that we are now spending far more money to tamper with a system that would never have come about without EU aid.

Basically, Luas was a good idea and many European cities have such light rail or tram systems. In principle, such trams would also be a good solution for Dublin but only if they address the city's entire transport system. 

I am critical of the strategy because it does not integrate the whole system by linking all its elements together.

When the Dublin Transportation Initiative started its work, light rail seemed an attractive option but because it was not driven by the underlying needs of how to spend EU money, it only designed part of a system rather than an entire one. 

The DTI made the merest genuflection to a light rail system to meet the needs of Dublin. Since it could not even build the tiny system envisaged at that stage, before the EU money ran out, it decided to go for only two southside lines, leaving the northside lines to be built sometime in the future. I am biased in favour of the northside of Dublin. 

As has been pointed out many times in the House, the Luas proposal was totally inadequate for Dublin's needs. A third line, which was not even envisaged four or five years ago, was, in the first instance, not designed to go to the airport. 

Most people would now admit that by ignoring the airport, the Luas project represented an amazing lack of foresight. It also showed a lack of vision in covering such a small part of the city and by failing, unbelievably, to integrate properly with the existing DART service.

In a series of influential newspaper articles, the former Taoiseach, Dr. Garret FitzGerald, pointed out that Luas showed a lack of vision because it would actually have added to traffic congestion rather than alleviating it. 

Under this Government we have action. I am not happy with this motion, but I must admit we have had action and I welcome that compared to what we had before. We have seen today the serious commitment to spending money and I welcome that also in comparison to what we had before. 

However, this is all useless if the central ingredient of strategy is not looked after, and sadly, that is the case.

There is a huge transport problem in Dublin and throughout the country which has largely, although not entirely, been created by the unexpected scale of national growth in the last ten years. 

Our road system is inadequate and I hope we are long past the day when we thought more roads was the answer. That was a mistake many of us made - we thought that all we needed were more roads to solve the problem. 

However, we must also use roads, those in existence and those we need to build, with far more efficiency than we ever have before.

This means diverting as much traffic as possible off roads and onto trains, whether local or national. We must use roads efficiently by encouraging the maximum possible use of public transport. 

This will not be achieved by squeezing motorists off the road. That will help, but it will only be achieved by providing a good attractive public transport system. It must be affordable.

Allied to this must be a pricing system for roads and public transport that makes the latter an offer that the public cannot refuse. 

We have talked about pricing on roads, which is a dangerous topic because people think we are going to charge people to drive on roads. 

We have spoken before about the system in Singapore whereby if drivers insist on coming into the city at the peak period of 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. they have to pay, say, £1 to pass a toll. If they are willing to adjust to coming in after 9 a.m. they pay 50 pence, while it is free to come into the city before 7 a.m. or after 10 a.m. 

If this is possible in other countries it should be possible here.

Our problems demand a holistic approach rather than a bitty one. Unless and until all the pieces come together this will not work. If we do a little it will not work. Unless we do it all it will not work at all.

It is no good doing a little bit and hoping it succeeds, rather we must do the whole task and we are not doing so at present. That is the importance of strategy and an overall viewpoint. 

All the money the Government is boasting about will not solve our problems, because there is no central strategy or integration behind it. 

A set of disjointed policies is not a strategy. 

A series of knee-jerk reactions is not a strategy. 

A mountain of invoices so high it blocks out the sun is not a strategy.

When it comes to our national transport system we are adrift, not in an ocean but in a bathtub. 

The time has come for the Government to stop being so proud of itself for merely spending money and to knuckle down to the task of spending money in a way that will solve the transport crisis. 

If it fails to do so, its omission may be instrumental in paralysing our hard-won economic growth.

I accept the Government is making the money available, but let us make sure that we use it in a way that will solve problems in the future.