Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 March 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Oversight and Implementation of Capital Projects and the Role of Public Officials on State Boards: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Office of Government Procurement

9:00 am

Mr. Robert Watt:

Yes. Let us take a road project as an example. Once we have set out the design and have a price, we have reasonable certainty about how much it is going to cost. That has been the history in the past 15 or 20 years. My view is that where people put out numbers for the cost of a project without having set out the detailed design or tested the market, it is a guesstimate. It is an estimate, not a certain price.