Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The land is there and I hope they get on with it.

In reply to Deputy Kenny, we spent much time discussing this issue, and there are many reasons for increases in costs. Let us take the National Roads Authority. Several lessons have been highlighted, and the NRA has taken them on board. I am not saying that everything is perfect, and many of the comparisons are nonsensical. It has appointed a cost estimation specialist whose job it is to review all cost estimates, tender and system outturn costs that have been benchmarked and the design and construction standards now in place and when a change is made to take account of it. Often someone decides to build something from A to B and comes up with a rough costing, which ten years later becomes a real cost. Someone comes back to it and says he or she thought we would only spend €10 million but have spent €100 million. Some of the figures used in a recent programme were 1989 rather than 2003 costs. That is like if I asked the Deputy the cost of his house in 2003 in comparison with 1989. It is nonsense.

There have been over-runs and we must ask why they happened, why people change specifications and whether there is a need for certain standards. When there is a change, it must be costed and built in rather than done without reference to the fact that someone must pay for it. In fairness, recent contracts, for example those in 2000, have improved significantly, and the experience of both projects and increases has been very good. Cost-benefit analyses are carried out as projects progress through the planning stages so the impact of cost increases is taken into account. Several independent evaluations of the NRA have shown that it has got its act together in comparison with what happened before.

In fairness to road-builders, they are now completing roads far more quickly. The Monasterevin bypass was a year ahead of schedule. The Sligo inner relief road will be several months ahead of schedule. The road project in Carrickmacross has been well ahead. The Glen of the Downs was not, but there were other problems in that case. We are getting far better estimates now, changes are being dealt with and planning is better. We have also built up a very good team, and that is why it is very important that we have a five- or ten-year programme. Many of the people now working for us, who come from South Africa and other parts of the world, will stay if guaranteed continuity of work. The transport budget alone for the next five years is €10 billion. That is a great deal of money and the work on estimates is very important, since the savings that one can make on that kind of money are very large.

In my experience, as a country we were too slow in moving from someone identifying the route, with the initial costs, to drawing up a proper specification and deciding what kind of materials and standards we would have and whether it would be a dual carriageway or two-lane route. Everything changed because of the length of time, particularly in recent years.

One of the points unfairly omitted from those programmes is why people change specifications. Consider the number of cars and the population. As far back as 1993, people were saying that by 2010 we would have 3.3 million or 3.4 million people. Now the same experts are saying we will have 4.5 million people. For a person trying to design a road, much will have changed over that period, with a million extra people and a multiple of the estimated number of cars. Those are the reasons. We now have experts that are monitoring the situation more closely. Time will show it to be more effective.

The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is hoping to bring forward a memo on the housing issues that were in the NESC report, the all-party committee report and the report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It will take the three reports together to develop a series of measures that deal with affordable and social housing.

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