Roads price hike blamed on inflation and land costs

Transport Minister Seamus Brennan today put the cost overruns in the national roads programme down to inflation and the price of land.

Mr Brennan said the original prices outlined for road developments at around €7bn were a 10-year-old estimation and had not costed the programme as in a tender process.

A report from the Comptroller and Auditor General pointed to the motorway and by-pass developments running over-budget to around €16bn.

The hard-hitting investigation outlined an underestimation of the costs at the beginning and in the planning stages.

“There have been runs to do with inflation and there have been runs to do with the cost of land,” Mr Brennan.

“I accept that for a number of years, perhaps eight or nine years, until the national roads authority got the sort of skills it needed to push on the programme there were overruns. But they were to do with inflation and to do with land costs.

“And I suppose they were to do with the fact that some of these major projects were first time projects for the national roads authority.

“But I want to give an absolute assurance now that virtually all the projects out there are on cost because we have made the changes,” Mr Brennan told RTÉ Radio.

Mr Brennan said the alterations to work practices brought in over the past two years were working to combat cost overruns.

The moves by the Transport Department included fixed price contracting and a set investment from the Finance Department of €8bn over the next five years to combat cost overruns.

The Green Party’s finance spokesperson Dan Boyle said: “The NRA, having seen its budget for the National Roads Programme increase from €6bn to €15.8bn, certainly needs to answer questions on the ineffective spending of taxpayers’ money.

“This special report outlines some of the reasons for this over-expenditure, which range from inflation to poor management practices. Some of these factors have been corrected but many continue unchanged.”