The horrors of our infrastructure mismanagement are coming home to roost with a vengeance.

It has now emerged that, not alone will a whole range of major projects be delayed, but they are running substantially over budget. And we’ll have to pay tolls to make up the difference.

It is a disgrace that, in pre-tribunal and sex abuse scandal eras, would have put any administration to the pin of its collar to survive.

Which may explain the sheer neck of the bald announcement that the Government will impose its own tolls on major new roads projects to bankroll more highways.

The planned Monastervin by-pass will be the first to extract a state toll – and we believe it will be E1.50 for cars, though there is no guarantee it will stay at that level for long.

As it is one of the busiest roads in the country it will generate millions for the Exchequer.

Transport Minister Seamus Brennan is the one left to make these announcements. But, you know what is really strange? Hardly an eyelid was batted by either announcer or public. Have we come to accept such monstrous impositions?

And, Mr Brennan revealed, they are planning to toll more roads built exclusively with State funds – in addition to those already announced under public-private partnerships.

Needless to remark, the decision to do so follows an examination of the huge income generated by existing private tolls and the massive profits expected in a nationwide network of private toll roads.

Ten tolls are to be placed on the planned new network linking Dublin and the main cities around the country.

These are to be built by private consortia in partnership with the State. The companies are to be given 30-year franchises to operate and keep the profits from the tolls. We were prepared for that, and in a way most people could see the thinking behind it. If paying tolls means we get more and better roads more quickly then paying a few euro here and there can be seen as being a justifiable consequence.

However, paying tolls just because there have been massive overruns on costs and poor planning decisions by the Government, is dangerous new departure.

Now the Coalition feels emboldened to make it public that it will also toll major new roads being built with public funds.

Ostensibly this will be to fund other roads. But given that the total initially set aside for major road projects has already spiralled from E6billion to E14 billion, it is a fair bet we, and those who come after us, will be subsidising poor planning and management of resources for more and more projects.

There is no denying this is an attempt to do two things. Paint over the cracks of poor resource use and cash in on the lucrative toll revenue involved.

The first road is to be the Monasterevin by-pass, one of the most widely used roads in the country.

Coincidentally, this was one of seven projects to get the green light.

Now there is money for the Exchequer, there is a REAL reason to build roads.

Among those to be tolled are the Dundalk Western by-pass and the Kilcock-Kinnegad by-pass.

However, there is now no chance that the big five new highways between Dublin and Cork, Galway, the border, Limerick and Waterford will be ready by 2006. They will be at least three years later than proclaimed with such enthusiasm in the National Development Plan. And, as we’ve learned, the E6bn cost has risen to E14bn – for the moment, it could get bigger.
 
But seven new road schemes costing E1.1bn are to start this year.

They include the Waterford City by-pass, the Cashel by-pass, Naas Road Kingswood Interchange and the Carrickmacross by-pass.

But so many will not, even though they have cleared all planning hurdles. Among the 23 put on the long finger are the Bundoran/Carrick-on-Shannon, Cavan by-pass, Ashbourne by-pass, Monaghan by-pass, Castleblayney by-pass and the Kilkenny Ring Road extension.

It is expected that there will be a significant increase in the road building programme when four major projects which currently take 40pc of the total expenditure are completed. These are the Port Tunnel, the M1 Northern motorway, the South Eastern motorway, and the Kildare by-pass.