Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

Now that the Minister of State has given the response, I can go into a little more of the nitty-gritty. The Minister of State mentioned the Covid issues and the restrictions on working practices, etc. The council was aware of this from an early stage but it took the word of the contractor. I have had stories told to me about electricians walking off site because they were not getting paid commensurate to the increases in costs. As they are obviously the ones who have to certify the work, this would have caused delays. What we were told by the council which could not be put into the public domain was that while that contract was live, it had to adopt a softly-softly approach because if the council had to re-tender the contract, it would massively increase costs and delay construction of the pool. Three years later, we have seen a massive increase in costs. The original pool was approximately €10 million. It was €13 million at the commencement and now it has gone up to €20 million. We have had an increase in costs that goes way above Covid and supply chain increases.

We have had a time delay that goes way above what it would have taken to get rid of the contractor and act on clauses at a much earlier stage. There has been a massive clamour for proper transparency - as there has been none - from members of the public in Lucan who have been looking for this pool for years. The council has consistently refused to give any sort of information now that the contract is complete from the McLoughlins side on why it held on as long as it did. What were the factors? There could be valid factors. I would like to see them in the public domain. We cannot wait until after the pool is completed. We need this information now because it is a huge waste of public money that we need to investigate. I ask that the State would use its own resources to try and get such an inquiry going.

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