Up to €3 billion a year is lost because of traffic congestion on the M50, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has claimed.
Citing the example of a Co Dublin commuter who spends 2½ working days in traffic every week and her husband another day, Mr Kenny said they were typical of up to 100,000 families using the M50 and this cost up to €3 billion a year in productivity and time pressure, he believed.
He called for the early introduction of Operation Freeflow, the Christmas traffic flow scheme, and the lifting of the toll barriers when traffic builds up to provide immediate relief for commuters.
Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said however that "the suggestion that lifting barriers would deal with existing capacity rather than attract further capacity and cause further gridlock is another issue to which traffic management experts refer. There is no simple obvious solution to this problem."
He pointed out that work was under way to change the interchanges, widen the motorway and provide more capacity which was a "genuine solution and of course that takes time".
Mr Kenny, who spent two hours in Lucan, west Co Dublin, on Tuesday, said it took Catherine Price from Lucan and her family "between 25 and 47 minutes to get their three-year-old to a creche and a similar time to get from there back on to the main route into Dublin".
He added that a great number of people in Lucan and in the vicinity of the Ballyowen roundabout have lost a sense of hope that anybody can do anything about this".
Mr Kenny said: "The Price family for instance, as one of 100,000 families in that area, make the point that each week Catherine Price spends 2½ working days in her car and her husband spends another working day in his car; 3½ days over 100,000 families equates to approximately €3 billion in terms of lost productivity, pressure on time etc."
He called for the introduction of Operation Freeflow, with gardaí at every relevant junction to keep traffic moving.
Mr Cowen said that Operation Freeflow was being prepared and the question of prolonging it beyond Christmas was an issue for the relevant Ministers. The Government has also made a serious commitment to public transport under the Transport 21 initiative.
