Buying out the West-Link toll bridge contract on the M50 in Dublin is not an option for the State, the Taoiseach has told the Dáil.
Mr Ahern said the solution to congestion at the toll plaza was an upgrading of the M50 and a move to barrier-free tolling. However, he expressed doubt whether even additional lanes and barrier-free tolling would be sufficient.
"Looking to the next decade, I do not believe that even the enhanced works will be enough," he said, because the current projections for usage of the toll bridge up to 2018 had already long been exceeded. He also accepted that the motorway was "like a car-park" at peak hours.
He was responding during leaders' questions to Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, who said that "impossible circumstances are created in the entire west of Dublin, especially at peak morning and evening times".
Asking about the Government's proposals to alleviate the situation, the Dublin South-West TD said "people would be prepared to pay reasonable tolls if there weren't inordinate delays". He added that the imminent works to renovate the M50, "including the construction of a grade separation at the Red Cow will make things impossibly worse".
He asked would it cost €400 million to "buy back" the West-Link bridge from the contractors. "Whatever the circumstances we cannot attempt to create grade separations and an additional lane on either side of the M50 with all of the disruption that implies, while continuing to allow the obstruction caused by the toll plaza," Mr Rabbitte said.
He believed that "at the very least" some temporary relief would have to be negotiated with the leaseholders, National Toll Roads.
The Taoiseach said he accepted the point that if conditions worsened during construction, "that will be a greater difficulty, which must be addressed. As the works will start in a number of months, that must be done now. I accept that during peak hours the M50 is at times like a car-park and you could not argue against that but the solution to peak-hour congestion on the route in the view of traffic engineers is the implementation of the M50 upgrade and barrier-free tolling," he said. A buyout of the contract had not been considered. "Any such consideration would have to take account of the costs involved and the implications for the funding of the M50 upgrade project, which is linked."
He said the Comptroller and Auditor General "is carrying out a preliminary review of the West-Link concession with a view to deciding whether to carry out a full value-for-money analysis".
Expressing his own doubts about the effectiveness of the upgrade, the Taoiseach said that "looking to the next decade, I do not believe that even the enhanced works will be enough. When the Spanish built their version of the M50 around Madrid, they also wisely built an outer road and this issue must be examined for the longer-term."
