Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 November 2020

Public Accounts Committee

2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 6 - Expenditure under a Maintenance Contract
2019 Appropriation Accounts
Vote 13 - Office of Public Works

4:30 pm

Mr. John Sydenham:

I will start with Glashaboy. It has been submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Under the new transposed regulations, the Minister has to conduct, as part of the assessment and prior to confirmation, an environmental assessment. As the Department does not have in-house resources to do that work, which is very complex and technical, it procures consultants to carry it out on its behalf. That process has taken place on the Glashaboy scheme and the consultants have done their assessment. As part of that, they wrote to the Office of Public Works setting out what additional information they needed. We responded in October of this year with that additional information. That has gone back to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The confirmation process should be completed fairly shortly. There are many processes to go through. Once the confirmation comes through, the detailed design and the tender process will be completed. We estimate and expect construction should start late next year.