Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome this legislation from Deputy Shanahan and his colleagues. I also welcome the opportunity to discuss capital cost overruns. When it comes to capital spending, as we know, questions are repeatedly asked after the fact but the answers are hard to find. Paper trails run out and memories falter. Transparency is all too absent with our Government and political system having not fully embraced a culture of open decision-making. Along with undermining trust in the system, this lack of accountability also leads to massive amounts of public resources being wasted. These are, of course, resources that are very badly needed in other areas.

The most obvious example of this is, as we know, the national children's hospital. It is fair to say this badly needed project has become a runaway train with, it seems, no one in the Government capable of taking hold. This hospital is set to become the most expensive healthcare facility in the world with a final cost of well over €2 billion, which far outstrips the initial capital allocation of €1.4 billion. As of 30 September, only €71 million was left in the overall budget, even though the project will not be substantially completed until at least the end of October next year or welcome patients until the summer of 2025, which is the best-case scenario, although adherence to that timeline also appears quite unlikely now. Significant claims still need to be settled that substantially surpass the remaining allocation. One is to the tune of €100 million with a further 17 such claims amounting to more than €600 million.

Lessons have to be learned from the spending and oversight of this major project. It cannot simply be consigned to the history books like so many other projects that cost far more than was initially expected, for example, the €120 million overspend on the abandoned HSE payroll system, the €600 million overrun on the Luas or the €11 billion over-budget motorway project scheme. I could go on and on.

In particular, spending on major transport infrastructure projects must be further scrutinised and evaluated. A case in point is the long-running saga of MetroLink. Successive transport Ministers' failure to deliver this critical piece of infrastructure has made communities, such as the ones I represent in Dublin North-West, understandably sceptical that this project will ever be delivered. This project was first proposed in 2000, with a 2010 target for delivery.

In October 2011, a year after it was supposed to be operational, An Bord Pleanála granted the railway order. However, a month later the then Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar, suspended the plan with €200 million already spent. The plan was resurrected in 2015 with services due to commence in 2026. Three years out from that target, we are still waiting on a decision from An Bord Pleanála, over a year after the application was submitted. We are now told it will be 2034 before MetroLink is operational. That is 23 years after the first iteration of the metro was granted planning permission. We talk about the importance of a link to the airport and that is critical, as we are one of a small number of countries in Europe that does not have an airport link, but there is also all the communities in between the airport and the city centre that have been let down badly by the failure to progress this project.

This litany of false starts has not only eroded public confidence in the project but has also squandered huge amounts of public money. In July, the PAC published a report on transport expenditure and found that a total of €300 million had already been spent on the various iterations of the metro, including €99 million on the abandoned metro north and €18.7 million on metro west. The NTA estimates that each further year of delay would add an additional cost of between €100 million and €300 million to the entire project. The most credible capital cost for the MetroLink now ranges between €7 billion and €12 billion. However, an April 2023 letter from the Secretary General of the Department of Transport to the PAC includes an estimate as high as €21.5 billion. The scale of the increase in this project, a project that is 23 years overdue, is truly eye-watering. Every effort must be made to ensure this project does not reach those heights or breach the €9.5 billion mark, as called for by the PAC. After all, even a price tag of €9.5 billion would make it one of the most expensive underground rail projects in the world.

To control costs and provide for greater scrutiny of major infrastructure projects, our State agencies must be more transparent. Recently, the PAC highlighted that the NTA's financial statement did not say whether major projects kept within budget. Nor did it provide any rationale for where they had not. The same was true of TII. For example, the expected cost of the Luas green line capacity enhancement project increased from €88.8 million in 2019 to €95.7 million just a year later. This lack of transparency from the bodies leading the MetroLink project is very concerning and must be urgently addressed. A project of this scale cannot be veiled in secrecy.

On the Bill and its provisions, there is a very strong case for retrospective reporting on capital spending, although a much broader suite of measures and safeguards is required to break the pattern of overspending on capital projects. Not least of those issues is the lack of State expertise on procurement and the principles of cost control. I very much agree with the principles underpinning this Bill. I have some concerns about the proposed €500,000 threshold for reporting. In contrast, the public spending code only applies to projects over €20 million. That is too big. There is a happy medium there somewhere. In its current form, the provisions in the Bill relating to scale need to be revisited but that can of course be done on Committee Stage. Therefore, the Social Democrats will be supporting this Bill on Second Stage to allow for further examination, amendment and progression of the principles underpinning this legislation and the approach taken by Deputy Shanahan. I commend him and commend the Bill.

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