€1.5m of public money spent on Cork event centre without a single brick being laid
Enda Kenny, second right, turned the sod on the former Beamish and Crawford site in Cork in February 2016 but construction work has yet to start on the events centre.
Almost €1.5m of public money has been spent on the long-stalled Cork event centre project since 2014 without a single brick being laid.
Most of the money has been spent on legal and management consultancy fees, with two firms alone accounting for almost €1m of the spend.
One record provides a breakdown of the spending on the project since the competitive tender process in April 2014. That saw BAM win the bid for €20m of state aid, when it estimated the venue would cost €50.1m.
Following various delays caused by planning, redesigns, requests for further state funding, and covid, costs for the proposed 6,000-capacity venue have soared to over €85m, and the state funding has increased to €57m — more than the original cost estimate.
There are now fears that building inflation could push construction costs even higher.
The spending records, released under Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation, show that between April 2014 and May 2023, a total of €1,492,178.64 has been spent on the project, with €1m provided by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.
An analysis of the spend shows that two firms, management consultants Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) and the law firm, Ronan Daly Jermyn (RDJ), account for almost €1m of the total.
PwC was paid almost €483,000 for its work on the project between 2014 and 2017. The firm was heavily involved in the management and oversight of the competitive tender process for the initial round of state funding. There are no records of payments to PwC since October 2017.
RDJ has been paid almost €514,000 for its work on the project since October 2015 with the most recent payment of €31,320 in May 2023.
In April 2020 alone, RDJ was paid almost €160,000 for legal advice in the preparation of a defence against a threatened legal challenge from the operators of the Gleneagle Hotel in Kerry to the state-funding arrangements — a challenge which was later withdrawn as the pandemic raged.
Cork City Council chief executive Ann Doherty told the the spend to date has at all times been designed to safeguard public funding, to protect the taxpayer, and to minimise the state’s exposure to risk.
“Cork City Council awaits the final detailed designs which will determine the final costings of the event centre project,” she said. “When the detailed designs are received, they will go through a process of verification which should take a matter of weeks."
Former Taoiseach Enda Kenny turned the sod on the project on the former Beamish and Crawford site in February 2016 but construction work has yet to start.
Work on the final design is understood to be almost finished.
Local Labour representative Peter Horgan, who received the figures under FOI, said the long-stalled project needs more transparency and a shot of public confidence.
“What should have been a good news story for Cork is now a shackle around the city’s neck,” he said. “That (shot of confidence) can only come from a thorough publication of all documentation relating to the event centre from City Hall and central government."
“The people of Cork, city and county, deserve to know what their money is being spent on."
