M50 surveillance a waste of money

I WELCOME the call by the AA for the scrapping of the M50 surveillance system which will waste one-third of the revenue it collects simply collecting revenue.

If one-third of TV licence revenues were wasted on administration, there would be uproar in RTÉ.

If one-third of bin taxes were wasted on administration, county managers would be frogmarched out of their offices by irate councillors.

Why is €30 million being wasted on an unnecessary surveillance system when it could be better spent providing more buses and trains? There is an existing fuel tax which could be used to raise extra revenue without any additional administrative cost to the taxpayer. So why is the Government wasting money setting up a bureaucratic surveillance system to collect revenue that could be collected more efficiently and cheaply from fuel tax?

It is a disgrace that the Government is lavishing taxpayers’ money on extravagant surveillance systems and hiring more useless public sector administrators, supervisors and managers just to collect tolls when parents have to hold raffles and cake sales to pay for the heating of their children’s schools.

The Government should spend taxpayers’ money on services that benefit taxpayers and not squander it on expensive surveillance systems that only benefit the providers.

Jason Fitzharris

Rivervalley

Swords

Co Dublin