Aquatic centre - Water woes continue with costly mess

BY any stretch of the imagination, the massive leakage of water from the €62 million National Aquatic Centre is a costly shambles.

Laced with cracks only two years after it opened, the damaged facility has made a laughing stock of one of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s pet projects.

Amid fears of subsidence at the site, it is another costly example of taxpayers’ money being squandered by the State which, reportedly, failed to appoint a watchdog engineer during construction.

Several cracks have had to be repaired at the centre’s plant room. As emphasised by Labour’s Finance spokesperson Joan Burton, the questions surrounding the quality of construction at the aquatic centre will not go away.

Nor is there any guarantee that the facility, which had to be closed until May following New Year storm damage, will not be shut down again.

Swamped by financial and legal difficulties, the much-vaunted National Aquatic Centre has become something of a national joke.