A MULTIMILLION-EURO road maintenance and repair programme is to be developed to create jobs in local communities, Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar has said.
He was speaking ahead of this morning’s Cabinet meeting which is expected to discuss the forthcoming jobs initiative, tentatively scheduled for May 10th.
Dr Varadkar told reporters yesterday in Dublin his department would be contributing “a number of very positive measures”.
“On one side, I will be diverting some of my budget that has gone unspent this year into maintaining the roads. A lot of the roads around the country are in a terrible mess and there will be several million – it won’t be a small sum, it will be dozens of millions - that will be diverted into road repairs and creating jobs locally.
“Secondly, we are in discussions with the Dublin Airport Authority and the airlines about abolishing the travel tax and reducing airport charges, with a view to getting millions of extra tourists into the country later this year, and next year.”
The programme for government said that abandoning the travel tax was conditional on airlines reopening closed routes but Dr Varadkar said this had not happened yet.
“There have been some new routes, but very few routes have been restored. There are some routes to the UK and there are routes to Germany in particular that have been lost.
“But it’s not just routes, it’s actually capacity as well, it’s filling the planes and having more planes to the UK in particular, which is our number one tourist market.
“The travel tax was reduced by the last government from €10 to €3 and, at the time, the tourist industry and the airlines said this would make a big difference, and it actually didn’t.
“All they did was increase their profits and pack their planes even fuller, and that’s something we’re not happy with.”
There had to be a quid pro quo: “The abolition of the travel tax and reductions in airport charges – because we’re prepared to do both – really have to be reciprocated by the airlines in return, by restoring old routes and by increasing capacity on routes in particular.”
On the possibility of further public service pay cuts unless the Croke Park agreement delivered sufficient savings, Dr Varadkar said: “We definitely don’t want to impose any more pay cuts on public servants.
“Between the pension levy and the pay cut, most public servants have lost 15 to 20 per cent of their salary. Even after that, public servants are still much better paid in Ireland than in other countries, but we think that can be addressed over time through a long-term pay freeze.
“But the problem here is money and there are savings targets that have to be set, both to get our deficit under control and to satisfy the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union (EU).
“If those savings targets aren’t met, well then we will have no alternative but to impose further pay cuts. At the moment, one-third of all the money the Government spends is not our money, it’s the IMF’s money, it’s the EU’s money, so if you are a pensioner, if you are on social welfare, if you’re a public servant, if you’ve a child in school or are a patient in hospital, the IMF and the EU are paying one-third of that bill.”
He said this was not sustainable in the long term.
