Taoiseach Leo Varadkar reassured motorists last month that they need not fear congestion charges for the use of road space in Dublin, Cork and the main provincial cities.

He was backing plans from transport minister Eamon Ryan to discourage car usage in support of emissions reduction targets. Reductions are to be achieved instead through cycling, walking and the promotion of public transport.

Urban road space is scarce and it is prohibitively expensive to increase capacity.

In European cities, roads account for between 10% and 20% of total land-use and there are other urgent priorities, especially residential development and extra lanes for buses. Cars eat up urban road space mainly when they are parked, motionless, but also when they get moving, however slowly, in the peak traffic hours.

Cities around the developed world are implementing policies which ration road space by charging motorists directly for using roads at peak times and by restricting access to free or subsidised parking.

The two politicians failed to mention that motorists have faced congestion charges in Dublin for over 50 years, in the form of charges for on-street parking in the busiest areas.

What was then called Dublin Corporation installed 500 parking meters, operational on 14 January 1970 before the Taoiseach was born, and quickly increased the number to 2,500 in Dublin 1 and 2, the central zones of the city.

On-street spaces

There are now around 30,000 metered on-street spaces in Dublin and tens of thousands more in towns and cities around Ireland. Everyone accepts that stationary cars should pay for taking up kerbside space in busy areas, and charges are differentiated in line with the level of excess demand.

In Dublin, the rate ranges from €3.50 an hour in the centre down to €0.80 an hour in the suburbs, and many less busy suburban streets are free, as are most central areas at weekends. This pattern is repeated outside Dublin – many provincial towns have differentiated hourly rates and some smaller towns see no need to meter kerbside parking at all.

For cars that are stationary, Ireland has a coherent system of congestion charging, but politicians resist tackling cars that are in motion.

Dublin has point tolls on the Eastlink bridge and on the M50. Congestion would be worse without them and there are similar tolls in Cork and Limerick and on some main interurban roads.

The Dublin Port Tunnel even has a charge differentiated by time of day, cheaper in the off-peak. It is not open to politicians to ‘save’ motorists from the evils of congestion charging, since we have had it since 1970.

Urban road space is a scarce commodity, especially at peak, and it is fanciful to expect that there are painless pathways to using it better

But parking policy in Dublin remains incoherent: many residents are entitled to on-street parking permits, even those who live in the busy central areas, for €40 per annum, so they park, effectively for free, at meters which cost everyone else up to €40 per day. This is an enormous subsidy to the lucky residents, whose cars in many cases are blocking up space for badly-needed bus lanes, built, paid for and unavailable while ministers promise €10bn for MetroLink.

Its destinations at Swords and the airport are served, through the Port Tunnel, by frequent and popular bus services. The airport bus takes as little as 25 minutes from central Dublin, the Swords Express around 30.

Dublin Airport is the busiest bus station in Ireland and the trip from the city on public transport is one of the quickest at a major airport in Europe. Is there a problem to be solved here at all? Why is €10bn for a single tram line the preferred solution?

In central Dublin, there are numerous off-street surface-level car parks, rarely encountered in better-planned cities.

Annual fees range up to €3,000 per annum. There is a hidden subsidy buried in the rules about income tax and benefit-in-kind.

Company car

If your employer offers you a choice between a company car and a free off-street parking space, you would be dumb to take the car because you will be liable for income tax on the benefit. But the parking space is exempt.

Beneficiaries include private sector employees but also several thousand civil and public servants.

Urban road space is a scarce commodity, especially at peak, and it is fanciful to expect that there are painless pathways to using it better. Mollycoddling the public is not a credible policy.