If we allow it, writes Brian Byrne, we will be pitching our constitutional freedom to travel right back into the era of the turnpike roads of the 18/19th centuries, a period of 129 years when 'trustee' boards of local landlords and politicians became the 'legitimate' equivalent of 'stand-and-deliver' highwaymen, fleecing travellers as they passed through their districts.
During that period, tolls were levied on many roads between cities and large towns, with accompanying fraud, corruption and abuse. The roads -- the first toll set up was across the Liffey at Kilcullen in Co Kildare in 1729 -- were initially imposed on the main feeder roads to Dublin. Similar impositions were established on many other main routes, such as the Kilkenny to Clonmel road.
The tolls were officially supposed to pay for the upkeep of the roads, but there's considerable evidence that the money simply went into the pockets of the trustees, and anecdotally local labourers were forced to do the maintenance for little more than food for their day.
The turnpikes were officially ended in 1858, partly because a railway network had made them unviable but also because the smell of corruption around them was politically unsustainable.
In today's Irish Times, it is reported that the Local Government Efficiency Review Group has recommended that National Primary Routes should now be tolled, as part of a €500 million programme to raise money. These tolls would be in addition to those on the motorway network. The LGERG's suggestion is that this move would 'be in line with' the Government's policy on the environment, by 'incentivising' motorists to use other means of transport.
Apart from the fact that outside the nation's capital there is no alternative transport system for the vast majority of travellers than their private car, this would have the effect of leaving many of them with no choice but to pay extra tolls if they want to travel much beyond their own greater community area.
There is a reasonable case for tolling motorways because the payment does offer motorists the very real benefit of getting to their destinations more quickly and in a safer way. But to charge them for taking the 'slow' roads as well is simply outrageous. If we permit it at even a regional level, the next stage of this creeping 'stand-and-deliver' madness could conceivably be tolls at the borders of every county, as the local authorities try to extract every possible cent from those travelling through their area.
Far fetched? Back in the turnpike days, you were likely to be charged every 30 miles or so by the 'local authority' running that particular piece of road.
Of course, that was in the days of 'fraud, corruption and abuse'. We don't have that in our Government or society today, do we?
