Gama contract - Bypass deal puts money over morals

A sceptical public could be forgiven for asking why a construction group investigated by the State over worker exploitation is about to be awarded a €50 million contract by the National Roads Authority (NRA).

By any standard, the Turkish group Gama has treated its workforce shamefully. It has major questions to answer.

It beggars belief that the NRA continues to deal with an employer which engaged in a form of bonded slavery, underpaying its staff, making them work long hours, and stashing a slice of their hard-won earnings in a Dutch bank. The company has since paid workers who went on strike €8,000 each.

Despite its tawdry record, the NRA advised Monaghan County Council to give Gama the lucrative contract for the Castleblaney bypass.

The authority's corporate director Michael Egan argues that since the unpublished report of the Government inspector on the group was quashed by the High Court, Gama is innocent of all charges.

It is disingenuous, however, to perceive Gama as a company smelling of roses. How can the NRA turn a blind eye to the fact that Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin is considering taking the case to the Supreme Court?

Nor is it good enough to act as if the decision to call in the Fraud Squad was of no consequence.

In the interests of justice, Mr Martin should not hesitate to go to the higher court in order to put the findings of the inspector's report into the public arena.

There is a grave onus on Government to ensure that all State agencies remain mindful at all times of the moral dimension that should inform policy decisions taken in the public's name.

Despite the evidence that Turkish workers were exploited, the NRA, which is charged with responsibility for building Ireland's multi-billion euro road network, continues to assess contract tenders mainly on the basis of the lowest bidder and value for money.

Ensuring that taxpayers get value for money is vitally important, but it should not compromise other considerations, especially the moral aspect which must be taken into account at all times.

The NRA is right to insist on the ground rule that tenders be subject to tax clearance, labour laws, health and safety regulations and rates of pay. But if there is a whiff of suspicion about the activities of any company, the agency should not award a multi-million State contract.

Ironically, even though strict conditions have been applied to all NRA road schemes in the past, the Gama syndrome, involving a clear-cut abuse of workers' rights, went unseen until it was brought to light by Socialist TD Joe Higgins and this newspaper.

While the NRA's concern for taxpayers' money is proper and laudable, it has to be set against the immense scandal of cost overruns on Ireland's roads. A recent exposé found the average overrun for 30 road-building projects had soared to a whopping 86%.

By any yardstick, that leaves major questions hanging over the NRA's performance in policing projects, many of which were systematically underestimated initially only to be inflated later on with the aim of boosting final payments which ultimately came from the pockets of hard-pressed taxpayers.

To quote the NRA, Gama submitted the lowest of eight tenders for the Castleblaney job. It was, it said, the most attractive and the best value for taxpayers' money. But, with Gama still under intense scrutiny, at what price?