Public project costs - Culprits must be held to account

IN his first Budget statement last December, Finance Minister Brian Cowen outlined a transport investment programme of €10.2 billion for 2005 to 2009.

He also announced that funding for transport infrastructure would be done over 10-year periods to ensure better planning.

Given the record of this country in carrying out major public contracts, that figure will, more than likely, bear no relation to the final outcome in 2009.

That will be inevitable, unless, as Mr Cowen promised, better planning will be ensured.

Nothing seems to have changed in the relentless cost overruns of public projects.

The latest is a design error in the cost of a multi-million euro Kilkenny floodworks.

At €48 million, it is already running at four times higher than the original estimate of €13.1m.

Now, part of it has to be redesigned because the wrong type of fish pass was built on the Lacken weir on the River Nore which was too high for salmon to reach because the water levels were too low.

The Office of Public Works (OPW) is reported as saying the cost of rectifying the pass will not be “significant”, given the cost of the overall scheme.

What is significant is that this project is already four times over budget and the taxpayers will be expected to pay for this latest example of ineptitude.

Under no circumstances should they, and the blunder that is the Kilkenny project should be a launching pad for making those responsible for such errors pay for them.

John McGuinness, deputy chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), is right in asserting that the external consultants responsible for the mistake, if they are responsible, should be called before the PAC and held to account.

If they are, then they should be pursued to rectify matters at no expense to the taxpayers.

The OPW thinking is symptomatic of the attitude towards public monies that is endemic throughout the Government and its multitudinous agencies.

Whether it is a question of spending €93m this year on spin doctors and various consultants for the Taoiseach and his ministers, or a fish pass in Kilkenny, the perception is that the public purse is limitless.

A graphic example was the Luas project. In this case, people ran out of adjectives to describe the debacle, but a recurring one was “farcical” in practically all of aspects of it.

With regard to the cost, it overran the tender price of €635m by as much as €225m, caused by problems with cost projections, construction works and the Red Cow roundabout crisis.

The first tram began running in July of last year, two years later than planned.

In the first three years of the National Development Plan, €9bn was spent, and of that, €3bn was wasted in cost overruns.

Another undertaking shrouded in controversy was the so-called Bertie Bowl, the pet project of Bertie Ahern which, although now aborted after five years, still cost the taxpayers in the region of €100m.

Abbottstown was just one in a long litany of gross misuse of public funds.

The striking aspect of all these instances of waste on a grand scale, was that nobody was ultimately held responsible for it.

It is about time that stopped.