SOCIAL DEMOCRATS TD Gary Gannon has said the public’s trust in the Office of Public Works (OPW) has been “eroded” by a lack of oversight in the body.
It was revealed yesterday that an OPW project to replace an unsafe 70-metre perimeter wall around a government office ended up costing over €490,000.
The works at the Dublin HQ of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) were originally expected to cost around €200,000, exclusive of VAT.
However, a live ESB cable and a leaking pipe were discovered during preliminary works leading to extensive delays and unforeseen costs.
It resulted in a doubling of the bill, with around €240,000 spent on demolition of the wall and rebuilding, in line with the original OPW estimates.
The extra works to deal with the high voltage live electricity cable that was uncovered during the work however, ended up adding more than €250,000 to the bill.
The OPW acknowledged there were “very significant delays as well as increased costs” on the job at Lansdowne House in Ballsbridge.
This included payments of €54,000 to the ESB to redirect the wire and €61,500 to Dublin City Council so footpaths and public parking could be closed off.
‘No degree of oversight’
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Gannon said incidents such as this and the Leinster House bike shed and security hut “becomes a plague on all of our houses when the public sees such a level of waste and no degree of political oversight or political intervention”.
“It all seems to happen out in the ether, without any degree of involvement from government – the politicians responsible for the OPW, their names are nowhere near any of these issues.
“It’s really surprising that an agency could have so little oversight over the public’s money, and I think it just erodes trust.”
The live electricity cable that was uncovered added more than €250,000 to the final cost, but Gannon said “anyone who does any form of construction works will understand that these things happen”.
He added: “What they won’t understand is that it culminates in two years of a delay, engagements between all sorts of different agencies, including the ESB and Dublin City Council for blocking off the road and allowing access to public car parks at another increased cost.
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“These shouldn’t be seen as unforeseen issues. A live cable is something that can be factored in, but when it happens, it shouldn’t create a delay of two years, and see costs bloom.”
‘Cavalier’
In August 2024, it emerged that the reconfiguration and building of the wall had left a shortfall of around 750 blocks of a special type that were needed.
“They didn’t have enough blocks to complete the job,” said Gannon.
“Some of that stems from the fact they wanted to maintain the original kind of archaeological aesthetic of the building about the wall, which is fine, but the idea that you couldn’t foresee that there wouldn’t be enough blocks at the end of th
