High toll: State projects soar by €7.5bn
Opposition parties have accused the Government of losing its grip on spending with many projects threatening to spiral out of control. Last week, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern did another U-turn after ruling out the Dublin metro, at least in the short term, after costs soared to €4.8bn from the initial €2.2bn price tag.
The combined cost of the Luas and Dublin Port Tunnel has jumped by almost €500 million. The original cost of the Luas was €279m, with a €220m price tag on the Port Tunnel. However, the final cost of the two projects is more likely to be closer to €1bn.
Latest updates on the cost of the South Eastern Motorway, which recorded huge price hikes due to soaring land costs, puts the cost at €569m a 300% increase on the original estimate of €153m.
A staggering number of overruns have also been recorded on motorways and upgrading of national primary routes by the National Roads Authority (NRA).
Price hikes on the N3, N4/N6, N7, N8 and N9 and N25 amounted to over €3.5bn in just two years, according to the Auditor and Comptroller General.
Labour party finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said the massive additional costs to the tax-payer was down to a "culture of bad planning".
"Just look at health facilities like the Ballymun Health Centre and the new A&E at Cork University Hospital (CUH).
"Each were built without any commitment to ensuring running costs for them," Ms Burton said.
She called for the expansion of 'design and build' projects where the one contractor designs and builds the project so they can't claim for design faults made by a second company.
Fine Gael spokeswoman on transport Olivia Mitchell said infrastructural redevelopments had been characterised by uncertainty.
"Even before they get to planning stage, projects are dogged by uncertainty. Then, after that, the original spend seems to bear no relation to the eventual cost," she said.
ESRI economist Dr Edgar Morgen Roth said not enough attention is being paid to cost/benefit analysis of large projects. He said they needed to be carried out more regularly as a project's costs rises.
"The current costing methods are weak. In the case of Luas, for example, there were huge changes made to the project but these changes were never evaluated in a cost/benefit analysis to see if it was a positive thing," he said.
The NRA said it does not have individual/cost benefit analysis available on road developments. A spokesperson said the developments were analysed as part of a group with all the other national primary routes.
A Department of Transport spokesperson said yesterday "they have turned a corner" in the area of infrastructural overruns.
"By introducing fixed pricing and the 'design and build' concept, we have begun to avoid some of the increases that we experienced in the past," she said.
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