Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I congratulate Deputy Burton for proposing this important motion and I thank colleagues on all sides of the House who have contributed to this important and overdue debate. I note that the Minister of State concluded his contribution with an exhortation to the House to recall 1982. The dispiriting aspect of this debate is that when the Government cannot blame a previous Government, which is now a long time in the mists of history, it blames the civil servants. That has been the pattern. It is possible to detect in recent public utterances a strategy on the part of the Government whereby backbenchers and others are sent out to blame civil and public servants for the chronic mismanagement exposed by different offices of the State.

Ministers are getting it in the neck. They know that the mismanagement has happened and that the scale of it is indefensible. They are circling the wagons and blaming the civil servants. Being too long in office is by definition a bad thing as it encourages unhealthy relationships between the political and administrative masters. For that reason, being spurned, blamed, identified and scapegoated in public is particularly hurtful to civil servants who have been excessive in their zeal for and allegiance to the present Government.

Deputy Burton has afforded the House a valuable opportunity to express its concern formally about the pattern of waste, incompetent management and indecision by a tired and indecisive Government in the implementation of the national development plan and other capital expenditure projects. This tired, tetchy and incompetent Government, which is too long in office, has, as is usual on these occasions, whipped its embarrassed, awkward, silent and shuffling backbenchers into opposing and voting against what they know to be true, namely, the proposition that this Government is politically responsible and should be accountable for a shocking waste of taxpayers' money.

Deputy Peter Power blamed "Prime Time" for this debate and for misunderstanding the scale of the overruns and mismanagement of the roads programme. I want to deal with Deputy Peter Power's comment. After a "Morning Ireland" programme I was on this week I received a letter from an expert quantity surveyor involved in the business. He wrote to me along the following lines and said:

In your interview I gained the impression that you are of the belief that, whilst "mistakes" were made in the past by persons charged with the efficient supervision of public works projects, that that is now by and large a thing of the past. I respectfully disagree. . . . A significant area of abuse on public works in my opinion, particularly as regards road works, has been the use of the variation order procedure; Clause 51 in the ICI standard form of agreement. This is where a contractor is instructed to perform additional works. Its inclusion was always intended to be used sparingly where a new circumstance arises as could not reasonably have been contemplated when the engineer undertook his design prior to award. Instead, some engineers use the construction period to complete the design and/or to correct design errors which are then issued as variations.

By way of example, [he says] I attach a histogram of drawings which were revised and reissued as variations on the Ballincollig bypass. You will see that 85% of the total complement of drainage drawings had to be reissued to the contractor and that this did not begin until the seventh month of the contract calendar. The reason was that, inter alia, there were serious errors in the tender ground level information (between what is called the pre-construction "existing ground model" and the required post-construction levels) to the point that the drainage as originally designed was compromised.

He went on to make a number of other points. He made an interesting one about the filleting of the Freedom of Information Act which he used to compile information that one cannot otherwise get here. One cannot get it by way of parliamentary question. The Minister will not answer, but says it is a matter for the National Roads Authority, or whatever. He said:

In 2001, I attempted to undertake a study under the [then] Freedom of Information Acts to see if a pattern existed as regards liquidated and ascertained damages, (LADs) on public works. [As the Minister of State knows, there are many LADs in the business of public works.] My hypothesis is that despite the mandatory existence of LADs on all public works construction contracts, these provisions are never enforced. . . . Is it not remarkable how a significant number of these projects were allegedly completed 4, 5 and 6 or more months ahead of schedule? Or could it be that the times allowed for performance, and any extensions of time thereto were also "misjudged" so that many could bask in the kudos? . . .

In summary, I would reduce this letter to two observances:

1. I have never heard of a significant PI insurance claim to recover the cost of design errors in the public sector, whether disguised as variations or not, notwithstanding the Statute of Limitations. The same does not hold true in the private sector.

2. I have never heard of LADs being enforced against a main contractor for delay.

Could it be that, in both instances, an unspoken "code" exists? Moreover, people (and I include myself) forget that no public officials suffer public responsibility for such incidents, such as SIAC's deserving settlement with Limerick County Council.

Many of the Minister of State's colleagues have come in and tried to say that all has changed, that they have learned their lessons, that they were new at the job and were not able to estimate at the time, that they have now employed experts and this will not happen again. That letter from a practising professional in the business would seem to challenge that.

The Government side has heard the list set out by the proposer of the motion, Deputy Burton, and added to by colleagues on all sides of the House, including the Government side, about the extent of waste and overrun. It seems we will end up building half as much roadway as was intended by the original cost and that, by definition, some roads cannot be built, some hospital beds cannot be provided and home help hours will be cut. The Minister for Social and Family Affairs shaved €58 million off the social welfare budget. This is all happening.

I am not confusing capital and current expenditure here. Most of our capital programme is funded, unprecedentedly in Europe, from the current side. So many projects could be productively carried out in society if it was not for this gross mismanagement by the people charged with responsibility.

The Minister for Finance made a weak and watery defence of it all last night when he quoted and misrepresented the Comptroller and Auditor General. He quoted, in particular, that construction and land inflation contributed 40% of the increase or the overrun. Of course it did. Who structured the contracts in that fashion? Who entered into the deal with the IFA in respect of land purchases? Who set it up so that one could only build 8 km of road to the county boundary and so that this assisted the local contractors and friends of Fianna Fáil, rather than throwing open a piece of road and putting it out to tender throughout the European Union? Who did that? It was the Government. Ministers made that decision.

If I had time, I would like to go through some of the other misrepresentations that the Minister for Finance came out with last night in his attempt to defend the impossible. He talked about fundamental changes in the way public sector contracts are carried out. He promised these would take effect from the end of this year. He said from the end of this year, despite the fact this started in 1999. Where were all the Ministers who were in charge of it since 1999?

The Government boasts again tonight about how marvellous it is at the investment programme that for so many years was overlooked. It was overlooked for so long because the country did not have the resources for it. It has the resources now. The Government makes it seem in its amendment to the motion as if it is having a whip around the Front Bench and the Ministers are contributing their pensions in order to give us bridges and bypasses.

This money and wealth was created in the economy by the people but nobody in the Cabinet has supervised the spending. The Government set up a national development plan and for the first three years nobody was in charge. Nobody was responsible for politically driving it. There is still no one Minister responsible for driving the national development plan. I suppose that fits in with the easy excuse of "blame the civil servants" and making them responsible for what has happened.

I have a great speech here and I am sorry I do not have time to put it on the record. I was amazed to hear Deputy Peter Power blaming "Prime Time" for what has happened. The report of the Committee of Public Accounts makes it clear it did not have the "Prime Time" report when it made its findings. It abstracted a number of the roads projects and set out the spending clearly. Take, for example, a part of the country about which I know a little, from Knock to Claremorris — Knock seems to be the main hope we have of getting this Government to change; it would require a miracle to get it to exercise competent management. The Knock-Claremorris improvement was estimated to cost €19.5 million, but has ended up costing €36.044 million. The Youghal bypass was estimated to cost €10.668 million, but it has ended up costing €43.5 million. The entire projects done under this abstraction, only four, were estimated to cost €63 million, but cost €128 million.

I must point out to Deputy Peter Power that these are not figures misunderstood by "Prime Time". They are figures accurately put together by the Committee of Public Accounts and I find it difficult to accept the Deputy coming in here and trying to defend them. The important point that Deputy Burton made was that there is a pattern of waste and mismanagement. It is fair enough for Deputy Peter Power to say it is possible to defend mistakes made in respect of a single project, but we are not talking about a single project. Deputy McManus spoke about the mismanagement of the scheme of medical cards for those over the age of 70. It was calculated that the scheme would cost over €19 million, but it cost €57 million. The then Secretary General of the Department of Health and Children, Mr. Michael Kelly, who was also involved in the nursing homes issue, was given just 36 hours to consider the matter because the then Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, did not want what he considered to be a stroke to be leaked.

We have referred to the NRA's mishandling of roads projects. The former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Woods, entered into an indemnity deal with religious orders on the last day of the previous Dáil without auditing the contribution they should make. He agreed to cap the contributions of religious orders at £100 million, thereby leaving taxpayers exposed to costs of up to €854 million, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General.

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