A local TD says suggestions of plans to introduce a distance-based charge scheme for drivers on national roads should be taken seriously.
Deputy Mattie McGrath weighed in on the Road Usage charges, which are allegedly being discussed to be introduced as more people move to electric vehicles.
Transport Infrastructure Ireland floated the idea in order to both fill a funding gap because of lost revenue while also halving emissions from transport by 2030.
He says this project has been discussed and is known as ‘Project Bruce’.
Speaking to Tipp Today, Deputy McGrath says this will pit rural dwellers and city dwellers against each other.
“It’s actually called “Project Bruce,” we’ll go back to Bruce Lee; that’s the kind of tactics I think this government is driven by Eamonn Ryan and supported abled and abetted by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. I heard Michael Martin on this morning saying that it hadn’t been discussed or agreed, but it’s in the handbook, this “Project Bruce”. What it is is actually another attempt to demonise you and I who drive diesel or petrol cars, farmers that drive the tractors, or more importantly, the bus transport companies, and indeed the hauliers, that we are the cause of all the problems. It’s so sad now that they continue to pit rural dwellers against city dwellers.”
In Independent TD also shared that he put forward a motion for another site for the new National Children’s Hospital.
In March of 2017, Deputy McGrath tabled a motion for an 88-acre site going out to the M50, which, he says, would’ve been a more suitable location for a children’s hospital.
He says at the time, nurses, ambulance services, paramedics, and Gardaí advised that the present site on the campus of St. James’s Hospital wasn’t an accessible or correct location.
This comes following news that the hospital may not open until 2025 and has come under scrutiny due to delays and claims being submitted by the contractor BAM.
Deputy McGrath says other parties voted against his motion.
“We had a site out on the M50, an 88-acre site. I brought a motion to the Dáil on the 29th of March, 2017, and, of course, the government ran for cover and put down an amendment. The final vote, I got 17 votes down on myself to 58 against relocating the hospital, not going ahead on the present site, and going out to the M50. So Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, and some Independents voted to go ahead with the hospital there. Sinn Féin will stand up every second day in the Dáil now complaining about the price, the delays, the cost, the damage, the construction; they voted to have it go ahead here.”
