Budget Day 2010 is a very bad day for public transport. Minister Lenihan’s 2010 budget document contains a litany of further savage transport cutbacks with a core €38 million or 12% reduction in funding for public transport service provision.

€60 million (or 12%) has been slashed from the Department of Transport’s current expenditure budget. This will focus on a reduction in the PSO funding for CIE and its three critical companies Irish Rail, Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann. Earlier today in Dail Eireann, I asked Transport Minister Dempsey to address the serious reduction in services that rail users already face due to the impact of the previous Dempsey cutbacks on the new national rail timetable. But it appears that these cutbacks may be just the start of an even more devastating reduction in national, regional and local rail and bus services.

Of course, the most savage cutback in the 2010 transport budget is the massive 15% or nearly €300 million cut in the capital road improvement and maintenance budget which will sound the death knell for a number of significant existing road plans being promoted by the NRA. It is also very disturbing that there has been a 10% decrease in the current expenditure road maintenance budget given the role that badly maintained national, primary and secondary roads can play in serious road collisions.

The Regional Airports have come under particular attack with a 13% reduction in their funding which will have a significant effect on regional air connectivity. It is also disappointing that Ministers Lenihan and Dempsey did not review the operation of the €10 air travel tax given the plummeting passenger numbers through our national airports.

Minister Lenihan stated in his speech that revenue from the carbon levy would be ringfenced for a number of areas including rural transport. But there are no specific details yet on whether this means that the critical Rural Transport Programme will be fully maintained and expanded in its current operation.

I welcome Minister Lenihan’s extension of the VRT exemptions and reliefs for electric vehicles by two further years to December 2012. There is also some merit to a scrappage scheme in relation to removing high polluting cars from Irish roads and protecting motor industry jobs. But question marks remain whether many motorists with cars over ten years old will be in position to buy a brand new car and take advantage of this rather limited scheme.