Road works €12bn over-budget, four years behind schedule

IRISH road projects are €12 billion over-budget and four years behind schedule.

The Government was yesterday told to "get its act together" over the budget over-runs.

Last night's Primetime Investigates programme claimed the budget over-run on 30 national road projects is running at 86% over the original costing. The comparable international figure is 20%.

Primetime found road projects supposed to be completed by 2006 at €6 billion were now expected to cost €18 billion and take until 2010 to complete.

Yesterday, Fine Gael Transport spokesperson Olivia Mitchell said the Government needed to tackle the issue head on. "Over-runs are primarily due to the long lead-in time and the consequent cost increases. It can take years or even generations from when the project is first conceived to the actual start of construction and costs inevitably increase and land cost inflation has been a really significant factor in recent years.

"The main reason has been the traffic projections, and the scale of the road that's required and the standards we expect have changed dramatically over the lead-in time, so what we eventually build is quite a different animal to the one originally envisaged."

Ms Mitchell said that "bad planning" was also a factor, while she said the rising costs of the Dublin Port Tunnel were attributable to the many changes made to the original plan by the Government over the years.

"It's too easy for the Government to blame the contractors when most of the problems are the result of bad planning. The Government have to get their act together."

A spokesperson for the NRA said that the lowest or initial figure quoted for projects was the amount allocated, not the estimated cost of completing the schemes.

"That is in the Comptroller and Auditor General report. That is the shortfall between the initial allocation and the then-cost of the programme at 25%. The second thing was the 5.6 billion, the original allocation under the NDP, related to 1999 prices the C&AG saw the difference in inflation between 1999 and 2003 was 40%."

She said there were changes in the scope of the schemes, with requests for higher standards of roads increasing the cost by 15% (thanks mainly to Major Inter Urban roadways) and the inclusion of 13 more schemes after the publication of NDP adding another 6% to the bill.

"It's not comparing like with like," she said, adding that the NRA accepted the C&AG's findings that the NRA had failed to address some issues at the planning stage, a situation which had now been rectified.

The Department of Transport would not comment until after they had seen the programme.