Dublin City Council's director of traffic Owen Keegan wouldn't exactly be the motorist's most popular person. He has never made any bones about the fact that he really doesn't want any cars coming into his city. Buses are what their drivers should be using. And, when it gets going, the Luas.

And I don't disagree with him much there. Public transport would always be better than shunting a car through the kind of traffic situations that now seem the norm in Dublin.

Provided public transport works. Provided it goes where we want to go. When we want to go there. And is clean enough not to have us worry about wearing light-coloured clothes when using it. Like it is in a lot of other places.

In fact, most motorists would be halfway on Owen Keegan's side, if he wasn't such a pain in the boot about his own views of the evils of the private car.

But I was astonished recently to hear him say in a radio interview that park-and-ride facilities 'are not a high priority' in his Council's programme to have more people use public transport to get into the city of Dublin.

Now we know why they don't exist. Even though they were always a key component of various proposals aimed at solving the chaos that is the streets of modern Dublin.

An essential component, actually, for any strategy to sort out the situation. Because, as anyone using the Naas Road at commuting times will unfortunately know all too well, many tens of thousands of people are travelling into Dublin to work from far beyond the suburbs - where there might just be a usable public transport system available.

There's nothing in the current public transport system that can handle the numbers coming into Dublin on any of the main roads that are packed with cars every morning.

There's nothing in the projected public transport development either that could do so, either on the roads or by the very inadequate rail systems. It is a simple fact that, until some form of 'beam me up, Scotty' invention jumps from the Enterprise to Naas, that there will be tens of thousands of cars bringing their occupants to and from the city for their daily work.

A simple fact.

And, equally simple, if Owen Keegan doesn't want them clogging up the middle part of the city, he and his Council have to face up to one other simple fact. That the best way of stopping them is to offer an alternative parking place for them and regular shuttle buses to bring their occupants the rest of the way.

It is just another simple fact.

Therefore, one way or another, those places will have to be provided.

Owen Keegan said it would be an expense that 'would be hard to justify' over spending his money on more bus facilities.

The clear implication was that he would prefer if somebody other than his Council dealt with the park-and-ride matter. That his job is to discourage cars from coming into the city. No more than that.

What to do with the cars that drive 'up to the walls' is someone else's job.

This is the kind of compartmentalised thinking that is the single biggest problem right through this country.

The kind of thinking that allowed the sidelining of money earmarked for proper interchanges on the M50 on the supposition that they were 'saving' it, and then see it used, it is said, to build a beautiful highway into a minister's little town in the west.

I don't begrudge the people in the west their highways. But when it takes an hour to travel a mile across one of the the belighted roundabouts to get out of the capital in the east, I can't be blamed for getting cross.

There's no ethos in this country any more that encourages people to take the long view, to have an all-encompassing vision. Such as Sean Lemass had back in the 50s and which was what really sowed the seeds that sprouted eventually the modern nation that we have today.

Well, a fairly modern one. We have many of the trappings of kings and princes of the world. A Government which forgets it is employed by the people, for instance, and whose members can sometimes have the attitudes of medieval prince-chiefs towards their serfs.

We don't have the value in many of our infrastructures which should reflect the European money that helped to bring us into the 21st century, compared to similar countries like Portugal and Spain.

They, for instance, seem to have spent their roads money on actually building roads, not half of it on consultants to suggest how it might be spent. And eventually giving us too little and too late.

But it is still not too late for people like Owen Keegan to look outside the walls of their kingdoms and see the hordes wanting to get in as an opportunity rather than an evil. And accommodate them in some pragmatic way instead of depending on ideology.

Otherwise, and sooner rather than later, they will stop wanting to come in, and go to somewhere that it is easier to do their work, shopping, and everything else that Dublin's traders currently enjoy the benefits of.

I live less than 30 miles from Dublin. And fortunately I work where I live. But for quite some time now, the 44 miles to Kilkenny, or even the 100 miles to Limerick, has seemed a much more attractive proposition than hacking into Dublin when I want some city amenities.