All revved up

IT’S often been said — and never more than in the last month — that Bertie Ahern is a lucky general. By this they mean that when his anorak was being given its Teflon coating, they laid it on thick and fast.

By contrast, lucky isn’t the first adjective that springs to mind when you think of Martin Cullen. He’s certainly had bits of it. He was steeped in luck to survive by the skin of his teeth over a series of controversies/spats/misjudgments which are too familiar to bore you with now.

But the difference is that Mr Cullen has limped out of them while his boss has positively soared. The e-voting fiasco and the Leech appointment will stalk Mr Cullen for the rest of his political career. Opposition TDs know that, like Kerry footballer Paul Galvin, he’s the easiest of them all to rise and to bait. That prompts a predictable over-the-top response from Mr Cullen, who doesn’t have a well-honed sense of how the public reacts to this.

The Paul Galvin comparison is worth following a little. Galvin would not be especially revered by GAA fans outside Kerry and was (correctly) rounded on for some of his “corner boys” tactics in this year’s championship. But Galvin is an indispensable cog to Kerry and to the system that was employed by manager Jack O’Connor. To paraphrase the old Millwall FC motto: Nobody loves him but who cares?

The thing about Mr Cullen though is that he does care. You sense it talking to him that he is nonplussed — and even upset — by the negative ions that he seems to unleash into the political atmosphere. In fairness, since moving into transport two years ago, he has not performed badly, not by a long shot.

Facing down the PDs on the second terminal at Dublin Airport was a biggie. In his time, 23 out of the 24 road projects he has had responsibility for have come in on time and on budget (the exception being the Port Tunnel). He chose wisely in bringing in the very bright and keenly sought after economist Colin Hunt as a special advisor.

And what resulted was Transport 21, a coherent, ambitious and integrated plan for road, rail and public transport infrastructure over the next decade. Granted, it has its critics and his refusal to publicly declare the cost of some of the big ticket projects has led to political rows.

And the reaction to it when it was first launched a year ago? It ranged from indifference to antipathy. It was an also-ran story. A decade earlier we would all have been doing cartwheels. It’s partly that people are becoming blasé. It’s partly Mr Cullen himself. Sure, he has drawn some of it on himself, but there’s no politician around who attracts such a bad press.

The interview is scheduled to last a half an hour but goes on for an hour not because of too many questions but the M50 length of the answers.

The phrases that recur are intereconnectivity, integration and — that magic political word, radical. And the Lego blocks that interconnect are: Luas, Dart, Metro North, Metro West, Dublin’s Grand Central Station at St Stephen’s Green, the expedited work on the five major motorways, the rest of the road network, the upgrading of the rail network, the 67 new carriages for Iarnród Eireann, the new western rail corridor, and the interconnector in Dublin that will bring all the public transport systems together.

You ask him if Luas would have been part of Transport 21 if it had yet to be conceived. He admits a mistake was made by not connecting the two lines originally.

“Connecting the Luas should have been done from the start. It wasn’t, maybe for good reasons.

“But,” he continues, “if there’s one thing that gave us a €34 billion allocation (for Transport 21), maybe it was Luas that gave us that.”

He argues the success of Luas gave public support to the notion of further public transport systems. His achievement in T21, he says, was taking all the ideas (some of them competing), sitting down and working out a comprehensive strategy that would deliver what he describes as a “21st century system for a 21st century economy”.

When it’s finished, he says, “it will be up there with the best of them, there’s no doubt about that”.

We all know that €34bn has been set aside. But why the reluctance to say how much individual components will cost? The opposition say it’s to prevent the Government from being embarrassed when there are over-runs. The minister denies this.

“Everybody was talking about different projects that costed in different ways. Then we were importing different views from other countries. Our critics told us that this can be built in other countries and it costs a fraction of the price.

“But that was without saying they don’t have to do public procurement, EISs, talk to every resident along the way, go through two years of a planning process.

“I don’t mean to be flippant. That bedeviled the debate.”

On Metro North, he says it is very simple. His department did a costs benefit analysis, which they presented to the Department of Finance.

He goes on to say that it will be one of the biggest PPP projects in the world.

“If I were to put out a figure, that would remove the leverage from the taxpayer in terms of getting the best value for money.”

The good record on roads in the past two years has been blemished by the delays and problems with the Port Tunnel. While saying it’s a project he inherited, Mr Cullen also defends its costs, pointing out that it’s a colossal project, with 5km of tunnel built to motorway standards.

As for its €750 million price tag? “At that price it’s probably very good value because of the scale of it. As we go forward its (value) will be immeasurable. People forget that the first underground in London was opened in 1860 and it’s still running today.”

One aspect of Mr Cullen’s tenure for which he will not receive garlands is the road safety. The interview is done a few days after six more young people have died in weekend accidents, bringing the total number of casualties to more than 300 after 10 months. What does he propose to do to put a stop to the carnage?

“Firstly, of course, as a parent, you are concerned — when you have kids the same age — as to what happens on the road.

“I am absolutely determined to find whatever methodologies we can to find a solution.”

He defends his own records. “You have to put this in a context. I think in the last 12 months, we have made huge strides. Some will say they are overdue.

“All the issues that were in the document on road safety, especially the core issues like random breath testing, the roll-out of traffic corps, (the banning of handheld) mobile phones, and penalty points, we have introduced.

“There’s no doubt that a culture change is taking place. (But there is) a particular pocket which is young men under the age of 25. By international standards, we are not the best but we are a long way from being the worst.”

Mr Cullen argues that any new measures have to be practical and realistic. He muses about a “definite deep malaise” in the mind-set of some young male drivers, says he will be very open to the proposals he receives from the Road Safety Authority on additional measures.

His thinking seems to be in the area of licensing, an abandonment of the provisional licence system, replacing it with a driving school where new drivers will have to prove full competence and responsibility before being allowed drive on a public road.