09/12/09

LABOUR TD for Cork East Seán Sherlock says the government's woeful funding of Ireland's road network will undermine any new car scrappage scheme.

"Fianna Fáil's mantra on road transport seems to be ‘drive your new state of the art hybrid across our shoddy roads.' It just doesn't make sense.

 

"No one in their right minds would subject a new car to some of the crater-filled Third World routes that pass for roads in this country. Sadly this ill thought out policy of cutting county and tertiary road funding defeats the purpose of introducing a stimulus for the motor trade.

 

"Perhaps if the members of the Cabinet drove themselves down county roads they would see why the public would be reluctant to subject a new state of the art machine to such poor infrastructure.

 

"Once again Ireland's road networks will be under funded. My recent attempt to find the motor tax take from my own county revealed that there is little transparency with the Government in terms of how much tax taken from motorists is actually used on maintaining our rural roads.

 

"It is typical of Fianna Fáil to exhibit such short-sightedness, but in fairness they are not solely culpable. This budget has been handled with Green fingers, a Party completely out of touch with the realities that face rural commuters. I would like to invite Ministers Gormley and Ryan to take a detour off their Dublin cycle lanes and come down a country boreen. Then tell me they would drive a 2010 hybrid down there.

 

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