Yesterday in the greater Dublin area, the Christmas 2006 Operation Freeflow began. Unfortunately for hard-pressed commuters, whether travelling on private or public transport, it was scarcely noticed this year. It was more a question of operation no-go, as usual. People neither arrived earlier to work nor home to their families. As an example, as usual this morning, it took 30 minutes to get from Mulhuddart to the Blanchardstown roundabout, a grand distance of one and a half miles.

The Deputy must have been speeding.

Most movements observed in that time related to the moving arms of trainee gardaí, frantically trying to push the traffic forward, but there was nowhere for it to go. Had the most famous stable in history been sited on the Blanchardstown roundabout, Mary and Joseph would have got quicker from Mulhuddart on their ass this morning than their unfortunate fellow travellers, all of 2,000 years later — and would have breathed fresh air all the way. Had they tried public transport this morning, they would have found as little room there as they did in the historic inn. In short it is a disaster, and what is true of Blanchardstown is true of the greater Dublin area. As my Independent colleagues tell me, it is being replicated right across the State in different ways.

Ministers, including the Taoiseach, are completely cosseted from this daily grind and do not appreciate that commuters are at breaking point, not because of the exceptional debacle we had last Wednesday on the N11, but because of the daily debacle they have to fight through.

The Taoiseach must not patronise the House with his usual response to the effect that this is the price of economic success. It is the price of 40 years of corruption of the planning system. Far more insidious than the bribes in brown envelopes to council minnows is the domination of Governments — particularly Fianna Fáil Governments — by the ethos of utterly selfish land developers and speculators. This includes people on the Taoiseach's watch over the last ten years to whom he has given carte blanche to put up tens of thousands of houses and apartments and walk away with obscene profits leaving new communities desperately struggling with an infrastructural void of horrific proportions.

The Deputy's time is concluded.

Will the Taoiseach own up to the responsibility first of all, which would be a start? Operation Freeflow had an effect ten years ago. Today it is irrelevant. Before our people have a collective breakdown induced by gridlock, will the Taoiseach introduce emergency investment and measures in the immediate weeks and months ahead? Double the buses in the cities and the quality bus corridors. Double the trains on such lines as exist and rapidly increase the extra lines. Doing so in 2015 is no use. When buses and trains are flying past gridlocked cars and bringing people to their destinations in a third of the time, then we will know that we have begun to resolve this horrific situation. What hope can the Taoiseach offer hard-pressed people throughout the country who are mired in this infrastructural crisis?

The Deputy has asked what can be done in the short term to cope with the enormous amount of additional traffic we have had in this city — about 800,000 more vehicles than we had some years ago.

The Government has approved funding of €30 million for the purchase by Dublin Bus of 100 additional buses. A large number of them will arrive in January, which is in the short term. There will be a further upgrading of the garage facilities at Broadstone, as well as the new station at the airport, both of which will affect the Deputy's constituency. Dublin Bus hopes to enter many of these buses into service by the end of January.

The bulk of this year's expenditure is earmarked for the delivery of quality bus corridors, which are designed to reduce travel time for passengers, improve bus performance and improve the quality of the public transport experience. Again, much of this has either already happened or is happening. There will also be the proposed Dublin Transport Authority procurement of approximately 100 buses from the private sector to provide services on new routes, many of which will serve the new estates of west Dublin. This is to be done by competitive tendering. While I do not have the date for this to hand, it is part of the initiative to facilitate the entry of private operators by awarding franchises to operate buses for 15% of services, which the Government negotiated with the trade unions.

The Dublin Bus fleet covers all of the areas mentioned by Deputy Joe Higgins and has been substantially increased and renewed in line with the commitments under the national development plan, thus reflecting the company's major role as the key transport operator. While there are longer-term initiatives, the Deputy did not ask me to go into them. I refer to projects such as metro west, the frequencies on the train line and the new stations in Dublin West, some of which will open shortly.

In ten years.

Some of the stations, such as the one in Adamstown, will open in March. The number of trains on the route has already been extended this year and is due to be extended next year.

No, they were extended last year. The Taoiseach is wrong.

Most are broken down anyway.

The Taoiseach, to answer Deputy Joe Higgins's question.

Operation Freeflow helps at key junctions. The Deputy is correct to state it is not as successful as it was a decade ago because of the volume of traffic. This is particularly true in the Deputy's constituency because of the construction under way on the M50. The Deputy is aware the M50 work is being conducted at a flat out pace and is well ahead of schedule. However, while it takes place, there will be gridlock, particularly on wet days. One can see the traffic volume increases substantially on wet days.

Fianna Fáil was not planning for wet days.

These are some of the things that will happen in the short term.

What will happen on the M50 in a few weeks' time, when thousands of trucks will be jammed onto it from the port tunnel?

Total chaos.

This area is already jam-packed for hours every day. What is to happen to the tens of thousands of commuters who must cross the M50 to travel to and from work and who will be caught in a further incredible log-jam? The Taoiseach still allows building to proceed without the infrastructure. I welcome the Adamstown initiative for the new community there. However areas such as Ongar and Tyrellstown, the fastest-growing communities in Europe, are left bereft. For the past two Mondays, with other public representatives, I have attended public meetings in those communities. On both occasions, they were obliged to travel for miles to get a venue because there is no community centre. It is true that one of them has a €40 million hotel across the road. The Taoiseach should know this because he opened it and is a friend of its developer. However, when the residents asked whether they could meet there, the reply was that they could but that it would cost them €600 for two hours. This is the extent of the Government's betrayal of new communities in terms of infrastructure. The position regarding schools——

The Deputy's time has concluded.

—— is the same.

Can the Taoiseach, in concrete and realistic terms, tell Members and the hard-pressed working people in such areas, who pay their taxes and who commute and struggle to work, what will be changed substantially by the Government's action within the next six months? What will change to make life somewhat more comfortable for them, to waste less time on gridlocked roads and consequently to have a better quality of life? What precisely has the Taoiseach to say to them in this regard?

Deputy Joe Higgins has ignored what I told him about the additional buses. In recent years, he has asked in particular that the Government should try to deal with this issue. Almost 1,000 new buses have been brought into service by Dublin Bus. It is an——

There has been no increase.

Almost 1,000 new buses——

How many of them were scrapped?

The Taoiseach, without interruption.

Bus passenger numbers are falling.

This is Deputy Joe Higgins's question. He is entitled to hear the Taoiseach's answer. Deputy Eamon Ryan is not the leader of Deputy Higgins's party and I ask him to allow Deputy Higgins to hear the answer.

Almost 1,000 buses have been brought in by Dublin Bus.

Codology.

It only has 1,000 buses.

If Members——

The Taoiseach, without interruptions.

Deputy Higgins asked me specifically what the Government was going to do. I am trying to answer him.

This is fantasy.

Almost 1,000 new buses have been brought into operation in the past few years.

Members would like to see them some day.

This is Deputy Higgins's question. I ask Deputy Burton to be silent and to allow the Taoiseach to give the answer.

I am stunned by the Taoiseach's answer.

It is a misleading statement.

Deputy Burton is aware she is not entitled to interrupt on Leaders' Questions. If she wants to interrupt, she knows what to do, namely, to leave the House.

There will be a further 100 buses brought in by the end of January and this, along with——

A total of 200 buses were promised four years ago.

I ask Deputies to allow Deputy Joe Higgins to hear the answer to his question. Members of larger parties in this House appear to be able to stay quiet when their own leaders are speaking. They allow their own leaders to hear the answers to the questions. Deputy Joe Higgins is entitled to exactly the same courtesy as every other leader.

Deputy Joe Higgins will not object to good objections.

Poor Joe.

Deputy Joe Higgins, to hear the answer.

I was trying to get silence for Deputy Higgins. It is unfair that everyone interrupts on his question. I will try to move quickly in order that other Members will not keep interrupting. There will be 100 new buses by the end of January.

That is the third time the Taoiseach said that.

As for the bus corridors, Dublin Bus and CIE continue to increase the number of corridors. The port tunnel will open and while it will put more traffic onto the M50, it will remove dramatically thousands of vehicles from the streets that use them for rat runs at present.

There will be no cars in the port tunnel.

Members should never forget that one reason for the port tunnel was to remove five-axle trucks from the streets and residential estates. They were trampling through residential areas and through where the hard-pressed working people were buying houses.

They cannot get to work.

Thankfully, they both go to work and live in houses.

In counties Carlow and Wexford and in Athlone.

As for the ongoing work, almost €1 billion is being spent on the M50, which is hugely important to Deputy Higgins's constituency. This work is well under way. As the Deputy is aware, the project will be in three phases and I outlined what is entailed to Deputy Rabbitte two weeks ago. If one considers initiatives such as the tunnel, which will open in a month's time, the 100 buses, the work on the corridors and the efforts of the Garda in part of the Deputy's constituency, I hope that in the short term — in a month or two — they will go some way towards alleviating the problem.

Disastrous.