London Olympics projects chief Sir John Armitt sees lessons for Ireland

The backers of large capital projects need to work much harder to gain the backing of the public, according to the man who spearheaded the delivery of the London Olympics in 2012.

Sir John Armitt, president of the UK Institution of Civil Engineers, was the guest speaker at a forum on infrastructure hosted by Engineers Ireland.

People have to be persuaded about the need for investments in water or energy capacity, for example.

They need to be told “we are actually doing this for our children.”

As things stand, investments in infrastructure are not sufficient for future needs.

According to Mr Armitt, more projects could be financed by the pensions industry.

However, such investments, currently, are mainly carried out by the very big pension funds based in Australia and Canada.

UK schemes are “not that large” and would have to cooperate with each other on projects.

The UK president defended Britain’s Private Finance Initiative, its version of Public Private Partnerships.

He said the £7 billion (€8.9bn) London Olympics project, which was delivered within its revised budget, had been a success because it had won widespread political support.

Engineers Ireland has proposed a new ‘super junior’ Ministry of Infrastructure be created to lead the roll out of infrastructure.

A new national unit would be based in the Department of the Taoiseach.

Mr Armitt, however, said that he was “not persuaded” by this proposal because such a ‘super ministry’ might not be accepted by the heads of the other Government departments.