Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Humphreys for raising this issue. I understand his concerns. I hope I will be able to reassure him. I ask the Senator's indulgence for a moment. I will give him my script afterwards. I brought some copies along and I think I left them in the anteroom. I will give the Senator my script afterwards and I will try and answer his questions off-script as well.

I agree completely with the Senator that we need to ensure rigorous and appropriate monitoring of mega-projects, such as BusConnects, the DART expansion and MetroLink. The Government plans to invest billions of euro of taxpayers' money in public transport over the next ten years. Recent events have obviously made us even more conscious of the need to be forensic in our examinations. I know that the investment to which I refer is welcomed by all sides of this House. While we can all have opinions about particular issues within these mega-projects, I would hope we could all agree on their absolute necessity. However, we need to ensure that the funding involved is spent wisely and well and that, ultimately, the taxpayer gets value for his or her hard-earned money.

Delivery of these projects and programmes is led by the State agencies responsible, primarily the NTA in these cases, but with funding provided by my Department. That funding is subject to the public spending code, which sets out the appropriate structures for monitoring and management of publicly-funded capital expenditure programmes. My Department has long had responsibility for significant capital expenditure programmes and, obviously, we have well developed monitoring and oversight systems in place already. We absolutely recognise that these mega-projects bring unique challenges and we need to keep our governance arrangements for the years ahead refreshed and effective. I assure the Senator that my Department is keenly aware of the need to maintain appropriate oversight as these projects really take shape over the course of this year and beyond. We can all recognise that this governance will need to be flexible and will take different forms at different stages - just like the projects themselves.

Not only will there be different phases over the life cycle of these projects in respect of which different skills will be required at various times but also the projects differ considerably from each other. BusConnects and the DART expansion, for example, are both programmes of capital expenditure made up of many different projects, each required to give the overall benefits expected of the programme, whereas MetroLink is in some ways unique. MetroLink is the development of a largely underground link from the city centre to Swords and a connected requirement to increase capacity along the Luas green line.

Delivery of these projects and programmes will be led by very experienced State bodies such as the NTA and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII. They are widely recognised as having successfully implemented a number of significant public transport projects through the years.Of course at a departmental level we need to monitor and oversee delivery in line with the public spending code and also advise the Government in its role as the ultimate sanctioning authority at certain key decision points. At the relevant points along the way, we will need to augment our skills with specialised knowledge to ensure we are providing the best advice we can to the Government. We have been discussing what those requirements are with relevant stakeholders in recent months. I assure the Senator, and the House, that the good governance of these, and indeed all projects and programmes in my Department, are of the utmost importance and we will strive to ensure the taxpayers' interests are protected at all times.

I will add to that because I want to give more specific information to Senator Humphreys in response to what he said. When we get a business case in such situations, we normally tear it apart and then we go to the Government with the budget. If one takes, for example, the Irish Rail situation at the moment where there is €480 million budgeted for it for the coming year, the independent Commission for Railway Regulation, CRR, meets with my Department every quarter. The National Transport Authority, NTA, on the other hand, on projects like the ones mentioned by the Senator, namely, the metro and BusConnects, meets on a monthly basis to discuss the budgets. It looks at all the expenditure, tracks it and it reports to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform if there is any diversion beyond a margin which I think is about €100,000. The Senator should not quote me on that but it is something of that order and that is reported to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform if there is any diversion or wavering outside the set parameters. Expenditure is monitored strictly, on a monthly basis in the case of the NTA, while Irish Rail monitors its projects on a quarterly basis. Senator Humphreys can be absolutely certain that we are looking out for any kind of diversions from the original budgets and they will go straight back to the Department of Finance-Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.