Paul Malpas

Does not your heart warm to see old friends return.  Take for example the report in the Independent newspaper about the National Roads Authority (NRA) who amongst other things collect the tolls from the barrier free tolling system on the M50 Motorway from their agents eFlow and Pierse and Fitzgibbon, Solicitors, Main St. Listowel, Co. Kerry.  The same NRA who you will recall are about to take me to court for having paid my toll on time.  Read my previous blogs, Hoping and Praying of13 December 2009, No Posts Today of 13 January 2010, Back On Track of 15 January 2010 and Old Monkey Face of 17 January 2010.

The NRA are having to pay approximately €50 million per annum to the private company National Toll Roads (NTR) as part of the agreement they came to with this astute company when the government took over this revenue link in 2008.  NTR was founded in 1978 by the Roche family and headed by Thomas Celestine Roche, himself of Roadstone fame, who died in 1999 with debts of £15 million and the reputation of being Ireland’s greatest entrpreneur.  It was NTR who according to the tribunals gave a £50,000 donation to Fianna Fail which was intercepted by the back pocket of Mr. Padraig Flynn’s trousers. which was also given another £8,000 in 1992. It was NTR who gave Mr. Liam Lawlor £74,000 for consultancy work on the East/West link of the M50 and also gave £10,000 to Mr George Redmond in 1986, to”hurry things along” on the same contract.  The same Mr. George Redmond, once Assistant Dublin City Manager, who was arrested at Dublin Airport with£300,000 in cash in his briefcase, having retired eight years previously from the above position which paid less than £20,000 per annum on his retirement.  It must have been a good retirement for him.

According to the NRA, NTR will earn between 1990 and 2010 a total of €1.5 billion, not a bad return when you think that for the last 12 years of this period NTR will do nothing but collect.  NRA Chief Executive Fred Barry nonchalantly says that he was not provided with any evidence of corruption in the awarding of the original contract but agrees that it has led to a “windfall situation”, while the Department of Transport says it is like “winning the lotto”.  Mr. Tommy Brougham, Labour ‘s transport spokesman, says it is a “grotesquely incompetant or corrupt agreement”

Prithee, I hear you ask, who signed the original contract to allow NTR this grossly fat cow of profit.  Why none other than Padraig Flynn, as Environmental Minister and Mr. George Redmond, Dublin’s Assistant City and County Manager,  The names are familiar, are they not?

The above tale shows to all the world that if your entreprenurial spirit is good enough to succeed at doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, then get thee to Ireland where there is money for old rope to be had and why presumably the NRA are chasing me with such determination for the €3 I have already paid them.