Wasting millions

I AGREE with James McGrath (‘Big spender’, Letters, October 14) that among ministers who have nearly bankrupted the country, Noel Dempsey — currently in the Transport portfolio — holds a special place of honour among his peers for extravagant waste of taxpayers’ money.

He was the first to approve the evoting machines and he presided over the expenditure of €60m of taxpayers’ money on Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin, which is all but inaccessible.

The Dublin port tunnel, which cost hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money, is totally under-utilised.

To cap it all he proposes to spend further hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money on building a metro to the airport when the purchase of buses to utilise the under-utilised tunnel would suffice.

In fact had the tunnel been made a bit bigger it could have accommodated the proposed metro at a fraction of the cost and saved central Dublin from being dug up again.

Anthony Leavy

Shielmartin Drive

Sutton

Dublin 13