Paul Murphy: Calls PPP Toll System a 'Highway Robbery'

The proposed increase in tolls is just the latest part of a highway robbery which has been carried out by the private operators in this country. The highway robbery is facilitated by the government, by Fianna Fáil historically, which developed this whole notion of public-private partnerships. And the robbery continues apace. So the government has indicated that they are going to pay to put off the toll increases. Okay, people who use these roads will obviously welcome that, they're not going to be hit by these toll increases for six months. But the government is still handing over 12.5 million euros to these private companies. So the public is still being robbed, the public will still pay for it, but just in another form. So the scandal continues. And it's worth retracing our steps back to how we got here, how we have this system of public-private partnership where the public takes all of the risk and the private takes all of the profit, and how we absolutely need to bring an end to it. We need to take these out of private ownership and bring them into public control. There was a story in the Irish Times at the weekend which had a headline which said, Who runs Ireland's road tolls and who gets the money? International investment funds provide the money and take the risk for our motorway network. And that's the ideology. That's the propaganda. That's what they try to suggest, is that private interests that run most of the toll roads ran a risk and therefore in some way have a legitimate expectation of getting a profit. That was the ideological basis of PPPs in this state, not just in roads, but in schools and other important projects like social housing. But the truth is, when you examine it, the private actors on the motorways ran no risks. When the Roche family and their friends in Fianna Fáil did the deal on the M50 toll road in the 1980s, there was no risk. The state built the motorway. The only remaining link that the NTR built did not leave any option for motorists to fly over or bypass the link. It was a cash cow delivered to a wealthy dynasty that set them up for generations to come. We were sold a con then. We were told that by using private enterprise, the state avoided funding all of the costs of key infrastructure. The public would save money and that in return the private companies ran a risk that they could lose the money. And we, this was the idea, we got these roads, schools, houses at supposedly a bargain price. Of course, it was a nonsense. These people weren't doing it for the good of their health. They were doing it because they were out to make a very substantial profit. It was a nonsense then. It's a nonsense now. And it's been used to contract out core state responsibilities and fatten the profit margins of already wealthy investors and company owners. The twists and turns in public, in share ownership and buyouts since the start of PPPs are a part of the same process of financialisation where key public goods have been plundered by various vested interests. Again, with the public picking up the tab. The justification for these increases, i.e. the contracts allow for it, deferring it will mean larger increases later, follows a pattern that has been repeated again and again without looking at the question of how did we get here. And we got here because of the hold of neoliberal ideas on the government and the core actors in the state and because it was presented that private sector involvement in any project was unquestionably seen as a good thing, whereas the public sector was seen as inherently inefficient, unionised, backward and so on. We do have the result of all this policy and we can, you know, draw a balance sheet on it. And the truth is the policy has been a disaster. It means that when we face a cost of living crisis, as we do, we're told we can't prevent hikes and tolls because of the PPPs or in this case, OK, we can prevent them temporarily, but we have to go and pay for it. At key moments, PPPs and the privatisation beyond that remove the ability of the state or certainly weaken the ability of the state to encroal costs and provide key services. Look at the facts of it. The facts suggest that private sector didn't ever risk their wealth in this process. There was an ESRI report in 2018 which found that, quote, a striking feature of our analysis is the revelation that road PPP projects are mainly financed by the public sector. Our analysis has established that the public sector has contributed £1.01 billion in construction payments in addition to £1.17 billion spent on land acquisition costs. Although private finance contributed over £1.8 billion of investment in the projects analysed, of this, over £590 million was borrowed from the EIB, which is a major lender of public funds, to the private PPP companies, end quote. It also found that while PPPs accounted for one-third of Ireland's motorway networks, the use of PPPs at that time had not been subject to any review or analysis by the state. So far from saving the state's money, even in the initial building stage, PPPs in roads cost us and people continue to pay dearly via charges as well as directly subsidising the private sector. And who gains is the operators who have been returning profits despite the slowdown during COVID. The M1 at Gormanstown made €8 million last year for Celtic roads. The Portlaoise bypass made €4 million for them. The Waterford bypass made them €3 million. Eurolink made €5 million from the M4, almost €6 million from the M3 and so on. That's just in the last year. Toll roads and PPPs are the gift that continues to give for many of Ireland's wealthiest and some of the globe's largest investment funds. We know that the Roach family, via National Toll Roads, made a vast amount on the M50 deal. We also know, as reported in the Business Post some years ago, quote, the state paid a staggering €600 million to NTR to buy out the Westlink Toll Bridge operation. It is estimated that NTR earned over €1.15 billion from the motorway project, which was built at a cost of around €60 million. The array of international funds, private corporations and Irish rich who have made a killing from PPPs. These deals, which are presented as a good deal for the public and so on, in reality, were always designed to do that, to transfer wealth from the public to very rich private operators, and they continue to fulfil that role. The hikes that motorists face during the cost of living crisis is just the latest episode in a long-running saga of how the main political parties in this state, especially Fianna Fáil, have forced ordinary people to pay for those profits in various different ways. And that continues. So you see, you know, the situation whereby, okay, they force the delay their costs, but they get it from the public. They force the delay their increases, but they get it from the public in another way because the state simply pays them not to do it. It's a scandal. The way to bring an end to it is to take these toll roads, which have already made huge money for their private owners, take them out of private ownership, bring them into public ownership and run them in the interests of the public. Thank you.