All they’re doing now is taking us for a ride to the polling station

THE answer as to how the Government is going to deliver the €34.4 billion transport plan on deadline and within budget was suggested the next day in a headline which related to New Orleans.

It said: "New Orleans looks to voodoo to bring city back from the dead."

Voodoo.

That's about the only hope this Government has of delivering the plan.

That's providing, of course, they're still in power 10 years from now but then voodoo is supposed to be a powerful force.

The Taoiseach said the 10-year plan would be completed on time and on budget, but there's about as much chance of that happening as Saddam Hussein being acquitted of crimes against humanity. In fact, Saddam's acquittal would be a safer bet.

This Government is pathologically incapable of delivering anything within budget, apart from pay increases to themselves, and even those are grossly over-estimated.

This is an election strategy dressed up as an expensive transportation policy not just for the next general election but the one after it as well. Motorways and train tracks are criss-crossing the country like an electoral map.

First on the bandwagon was Communications Minister Noel Dempsey, boasting, on foot of the plan, that Navan would have a new rail line in 10 years. Tom Parlon's constituents may recall how he was a bit previous when he claimed that civil servants would desert the capital as soon as the word 'decentralisation' was uttered.

Navan may have a new rail line by the time the 100,000 civil servants are countrified, but in the meantime I wouldn't like to be waiting there for a train.

It sounded dramatic when the Taoiseach translated the spend on the transport plan into everyday, understandable, abacus-like figures. For every day for the next 10 years that's 3,650 days €9.4 million would be spent on our transport system.

It's a considerable amount of money for most people in the country, but any minister worth a quota would have that wasted before they even got to the office.

Not so dramatic when you realise that for the past 10 months the Government has been raking in €100 million in tax EVERY day.

By comparison, what they intend to spend on transport is peanuts, and you'd better believe that this week's estimate of €34.4 billion will seem like peanuts by the time if ever the plan is finished and the final bill is paid.

What that tax take every day means is that the Government will have €1.25 billion to spare in this year's budget which, by a strange coincidence, equates with what it deliberately did not spend on basics extra gardaí, special needs in education and relieving poverty.

Essentially what the Government has proposed is a re-cycled package of projects that had already been announced before last Tuesday's razzmatazz some of them being dusted off for more than the second time.

Much of it had been promised under the national development plan, and that was supposed to be finished by the end of next year.

There was nothing new, for instance, in declaring that there would be a commuter rail service between Cork and Midleton.

It is included in Cork county council's development plan and dates back to the time when Seamus Brennan was minister for transport.

On Wednesday, a report from the largely respected Dáil Public Accounts Committee seemed to intimate they also subscribe to the Government's belief in the New Orleans model.

The committee has recommended that the budget should be announced when the Dáil resumes after the summer recess, so that it could be examined by an enlarged finance committee before the Finance Act is passed into law.

This ignores the fact that quite a few TDs fail to turn up immediately after the three-month holiday, and those who do aren't in the mood for serious business.

Let's face it, after two or three weeks off the ordinary punter feels depressed going back to work, so what's it like after three months?

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, who drew up the report on which the recommendations are based, said that estimates were examined by various committees that generally passed them 'on the nod' because by the time they the PAC considered them, half the money was already spent.

HE is led to believe that this recommendation would allow for proper scrutiny of Government spending plans and would cut down on waste.

Surprisingly, the PAC chairman, Michael Noonan, who always seemed politically alert, admitted that the committee was discovering examples of waste in public spending "after the horse has bolted."

I say 'surprisingly' because the waste of public money has been going on for years, or have Michael Noonan and Pat Rabbitte never heard of the comptroller and auditor general?

Every year he the public's watchdog on Government spending publishes a report which highlights how the taxpayers' money is wasted. It's amazing that the Government is planning to spend so many billions on transport over the next 10 years, when the basics are far from right.

For instance, Vincent de Paul has recorded a 300% increase in the number of calls for assistance it has received over the past two years. The society, in its pre-budget submission, says there are 600,000 people living in poverty in Ireland.

It is calling on the Government to take specific action on social welfare, child support, tax, housing, education and health.

Incredible, that in the richest country in Europe with a small population, less than half that of London, there are so many people living in poverty and yet the Government is talking as if they didn't exist.

Mention of pre-budget submissions, it's very reasonable of the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland to want their own police force drawn from members of the gardaí to protect the property of its members.

And they're good enough to offer to pay for the protection, like the organisers of major sports and music events do.

Except there are a couple of differences. Shopping centres, unlike sports and music events, are open every day of the week, and some of them around the clock.

Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy is not altogether averse to the idea in principle, having already floated his own idea of a public-private partnership.

People could be forgiven for believing that there already existed a public-private partnership in the gardaí it being that the taxpayers pay for the service they should, but do not always, receive.

You would have to wonder who are the bigger wasters in the Labour party's latest line of attack on the FF-PD coalition.

Labour's admobile, parked outside Government Buildings, is splashed with a huge photograph of Mary Harney and Bertie Ahern which would have cost the Taoiseach and Tánaiste a small fortune if they had to pay for it themselves.